


The Mechanical Dragon

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abduction, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Body Modification, Crimes & Criminals, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury Recovery, Permanent Injury, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-06-15 04:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 41,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: Azula is abducted. Her twisted captor has taken to sewing animal pelts and parts to her. She has to survive and make an escape.





	1. Monster Skin

Inhale.  
Leaves crunch beneath her, getting caught in her hair and clinging to her clothes. They are all dead and of a dreary brown or a dying orange. Twigs and pebbles scratch the exposed portions of her skin, mostly nipping at her neck and cheeks.   
Exhale.   
The midsummer sun is too bright for her eyes as its rays beam through the tree-line. She can do little more than squint against them.   
Inhale  
And the bugs. They are dreadful, absolutely dreadful. They bite at and land upon her as if she’s already dead. They tickle her skin in the most jittery and unpleasant way. She always hated spider-flies yet she can do nothing to brush them off.  
Exhale   
She can hear the rustling of the leaves and forest clutter as she is dragged along. And all she can do was is. Breath and maybe whimper. Azula doesn’t cry, it isn’t a look she likes on herself.

 

She tries to move again but to no avail. Some kind of poison courses through her veins.   
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale…   
Her breathing grows rapid as the clouds in her mind begin to clear and the gravity of the situation finally sets in. She wills her arms to move but they drag limply above her head. She feels a rough hand around her ankle, the hand that pulls her forward. She almost wants to toss some of her pride away and scream. But her mouth feels like cotton, as though her tongue is too big for it. Where had she been? What had she been doing before finding herself in this position? She can’t seem to remember, maybe her mind is still hazier than she thought. The smell of bamboo and mango are much to vivid, it makes her head hurt.  
Her body is little more than dead weight for the time being so she drifts mercifully away again. 

In retrospect Azula knows that she should have willed herself to stay awake, to assess her surroundings, to take note of those bothersome scents and awful insects just as she had been trained to do. Because of her thoughtlessness, she has no sense of where she is nor how far she has been taken. But in waking she finds herself bound helplessly. The manacles are of the molded sort, as opposed to two separate cuffs linked by a chain, these are linked by solid metal offering no room for movement whatsoever. The only chain fastened to the center between her hands is a long one that attach the cuffs to the floor. For it, laying on her back isn’t an option, she is forced to either hunch over, lay on her stomach with her face pressing against the grime, or on her side. She lies on her side, cheek against moist rock that smells of mold and an earthy musk. The cuffs are cold on her skin. She drums her fingers against the floor, testing their functionality. She finds that she can move again, but it doesn’t do her much good now that she is well and tethered to the floor. Her head is pounding, she can hear the blood beating behind her ears. She realizes that she is cold, a layer of goosebumps pimple her skin. With more discomfort it finally registers that she had been striped completely. Feeling startlingly exposed, she sits herself up. She might as well get familiar with her prison. 

It is composed entirely of rock. She thinks that maybe she is underground, but that can’t be so, because she can see thin beams of light through a slit in the wall opposite her. Form the way the rays fall, she discerns that it is sunset. Though she isn’t sure if it has been only a few hours or if she just so happened to wake up at sunset a few days from her initial abduction. Her eyes linger on the slit, too narrow for an escape of any sort. She gives the room another onceover but there isn’t much to see, it’s just a craggy barren space. The only sound is the hiss of a draft through the slit and a constant dripping that comes from the ceiling. She must be in a cave or possibly a dugout. She thinks that she can make out bugs scuttling over the walls, her suspicions are confirmed when a cricket-ant flings itself onto her face. She is thankful that the shackles leave her enough wiggle room to bat it off. 

Alone as she is, she allows herself to cry. The truth is she is afraid. She has always been the captor, only once has she ever been the captive and it was on the worst day of her life. That day comes back to her in full, bringing the tears on even harder. She tries to kick some fire, but the awkward positioning of her legs leaves her attempt fruitless. She could try anyways, to perhaps, propel herself up. But she has a feeling that she would rip her arms from their sockets before the chains from the ground. Were the chains rusty she might have given it an attempt, but they look fairly new. Fairly new and very sturdy. She feels so fragile in comparison. 

The sun rays turned to moon rays by the time she finished weeping. And good timing too because the sound of heavy footsteps reaches her ears. Quickly she wipes the wetness from her eyes and cheeks and works to level her breathing. Eventually the person is close enough for her to hear disembodied and raspy breathing.

Her captor is a dark, seemingly shapeless figure clade in black and washed out by the surrounding shadows. She can still make nothing of its gender nor nationality. The silhouette drops a trunk on the floor, and unfolds a miniature table. Once satisfied with the arrangement of the trunk and the table, her abductor stares at her. As the figure nears, her attention is drawn back to her nakedness and all she can do is toss her head in an attempt to get her hair to fall over her breasts. In a very malicious gesture, her vicious companion sweeps it back over her shoulder. Those raspy breaths now fall close to her ear. “Hello princessss…” Hisses a hoarse voice. Azula thinks that it is female but she still isn’t sure. She feels fingers on her shoulder and a body press up against her back. She goes rigid. “Say hello,” spits the voice. 

Azula holds her tongue. 

“This is why you’re here. Because you can’t even say hello to people you think are beneath you.” 

She thinks for a moment, about telling the woman—yes, it is definitely a woman—that her lack of greeting had more to do with being bound and captured than any feelings of superiority. But Azula keeps quiet.

“I have a plan for you. Yes I do…”

Azula decides that this woman is either very old or very unhealthy. But could someone like that manage to imprison her like so? There must be two; someone to do the physical and someone to weave the plan. 

Those bony fingers tap Azula’s bicep, she shudders. “A monster, that’s what they say you are. You act like one, banishing everyone and trying to burn everything to the ground. So that’s what I’ll make you then.” The woman threatens. Azula swallows a lump in her throat as the uneasiness swells. “You want to be beastly on the inside then I’ll makes you beastly on the outside too.” The woman wrenches her hand away but Azula can still feel her invasive touch. Without another word, the woman slithers out of the room, leaving the princess to ponder exactly what she had meant. 

Hours later, Azula fights for sleep. But it’s a battle that she can’t win. She can’t sleep with such a bitter chill dancing over her skin nor with that constant dripping nor the centiworms falling on her. Even harder is finding sleep knowing that, that woman could be back at any moment. As she lies awake staring, she notices a series of loops fastened to the ceiling. Something about them is sinister. Still she expects that exhaustion will claim her despite it all. But it never does and she watches the sky, through the slit, transition from black to deep blue, through shades of orange and gold, and then to the blue of morning. But the woman doesn’t show up again until later that evening and with her she brings something putrid. 

She hears something drop onto the floor near the table with an ugly slosh. The smell to follow is absolutely rancid. So much so, that she can taste it. Azula feels the prick of a needle, the woman waits until her head dips to clasp a metal piece around her mouth. With this accomplished she motions to the corner of the room; a man steps forward and undoes the princess’ bindings. He must be quick in his task, Agni forbid the girl wakes up midway through. He links a new set of chains into the loops on the ceiling. When finished, he replaces her old restraints with the new and shackles her feet with the old. “Is this what you had in mind, ma?” He asks.  
The old woman nods. Now she must wait for the princess to rouse. 

Azula comes to a few with a worse grip on time than before. Her breathing is shaky and her lip trembles. This woman is going to kill her. The X position she now holds is uncomfortable tenfold in comparison to her former bondage. Her soft noises of discomfort are muffled by the metal piece. 

The woman takes a handful of her hair and jerks her upright. She looks into her eyes, and sensing nothing but distress, grins. Azula is willing to bet that the woman is getting a kick out of being able to initiate fear into someone who formerly intimidated others so. The woman moves to the table and withdraws something from the sack she had placed there, in the process splashing a goopy sludge of chunks and bits of meat. It takes a moment for Azula to register what she is seeing. The sack flops over spilling limbs and blood. A tiger-monkey head reveals itself, its tongue lolling out. The fetid odor worsens, her eyes water. This time she does empty her stomach, though there isn’t anything to empty. The woman hunches over the table and begins to skin the tail of a mongoose-lizard. After some muttered ‘hmm’s’ she holds the peeled skin up to Azula. The princess can see stringy strands of muscle tissue and tendons still clinging to it. The woman decides that the skin is satisfactory and goes back to the table to retrieve something from her box. She wheezes a chilling laugh as she smooths the layer of skin atop Azula’s right shoulder. 

She tremors at the slimy cold. Foreign blood trickles down her arm and that foul odor starts to leave her dizzy. It is so close to her nose. Her mouth curls in disgust. Disgust that turns quickly to dread. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to focus on the sound of the dripping as another needle breaks her skin.   
This one is threaded. 

She zones in on her own breathing. One inhale, one exhale and repeat. In her mind she speaks it; inhale, exhale, 1. Inhale, exhale, 2. Inhale, exhale, 3…  
Until she no longer feels the needle weaving in and out of her arm. 

She can’t bring herself to assess the damage yet. She doesn’t want to know. But she feels. She feels that the mongoose-lizard’s skin covers her own from the top of her shoulder down to the outside of her elbow. She feels another ripple of unfamiliar scaly flesh against her own, this time on the inner arm. 

One sharp inhale.   
The needle is nipping her skin again.  
It works to mold her skin with the mongoose-lizard skin and she can do nothing but let it happen. Each pierce brings a teeny burst of pain.   
One shaky exhale.  
Her skin is growing uncomfortably warm beneath the beast flesh. She chews on the inside of her lip and hopes that it’s almost over. 

Once more, she opts not to look at her ruined arm. But the choice is not hers. The woman tugs at her hair again and holds her head at an awkward angle until she opens her eyes. The sight makes her stomach lurch. Patches of her own skin still show through where the mongoose-lizard skin couldn’t stretch enough to cover. And those places were read and swelling at the stitch marks.   
A pool of mongoose-lizard blood is collecting in the air pockets between her skin and its own, but the blood has nowhere to go so it simply rests, waiting to go stagnant. 

“Well?” The old woman asks, letting Azula’s head drop.

“Well, what?” Azula rasps, it is the first thing she’s managed to say since her capture. She admits that it feels well to user her voice again. 

“What do you think?”

The woman is mad, Azula decides. Completely so, if she expects her to praise her for her grisly handiwork. “It’s vile.”

The woman’s lip curls up into the kind of cruel smile that makes Azula’s blood run cold. “Then it suits you.”

“I think that it would suit you more.” Azula dares to spit. 

That wicked smirk transforms into a nasty scowl. With a feral growl the woman reaches into the sack and whips a handful of rheumy animal guts and pieces at her. Azula thinks that she may retch again but holds back, she doesn’t need to dirty herself further. 

The woman returns to her sack and pulls out the dismembered claw of a tiger-monkey. It looks as decayed as it smells. The fur is sticky with blood and in some patches, missing altogether. She fits this over Azula’s hand like some hellish glove. And the needle is back. 

The metal cuffs dig into her skin, leaving it raw and aching, but she can’t stand holding up her own weight anymore, in this position it is becoming too much. In the same way, she doesn’t have the strength to hold her head up so she lets it droop limply. She wishes that the old woman and her son would at least put her back in the bindings she started it. She thinks it may have only been a few days, maybe a week at most, but she is already crumbling. Azula can’t figure out how she had let this happen to herself. She thinks it over as she tries to sleep but can’t come to any answer. Her memories from the day of her capture are so fuzzy. Instead she tries to think about something else. Something pleasant. Something that may as well have happened ages ago. She thinks back to a time when human contact was a pleasant thing; when soft fingers tentatively brushed her cheeks and lips. To a day where she where it was nothing but tender touches. She clings to the image of her lover’s face, she fears that she will lose it if she doesn’t.


	2. Quilted Flesh

A morning routine begins to take shape, either the woman or her companion rattle Azula’s chains with a jarring, wrist-snapping force. Such is her call to awaken. She is allowed ten minutes or so to eat a meal she can barely stomach. A meal that always takes her much longer than ten minutes to work up an appetite for regardless of how gaunt she is starting to grow. A meal that takes much longer than ten minutes to eat through her disgust once she finally did acquire an appetite for it. The princess is certain that the meat she has been given is from the same animal that bore her new skin. It may or may not have been cooked depending on the mood of her captor. 

 

This particular morning, the meat is raw, possibly rotting, and she can’t bring herself to keep it down. She spends her ten minutes stooped over and trying or at least pretending to try. She feels like an animal and the more beast skin the old woman added, the less human she felt. If she doesn’t pretend then she would find herself back in the X position much sooner. She is weak with hunger and helplessness. She no longer has any fight in her, and her warden knows it--why else would she let Azula feast unbound? Even if she can muster up the will to fight she knows that bending is no longer an option with her hands in such a mangled state. If she even lit a spark, the tiger-monkey claw would catch and her real hand would take unsalvageable damage. She is untethered but she lacks the strength to make use of it. Instead she lets the man chain her back into the X position. He does it roughly and with little regards for her, not that she expects any tenderness or sympathy. Maybe deep down a part of her wants to believe that he has a sliver of underlying compassion that she can exploit. 

Just a small, tiny, fragment of hope. 

 

She breathes in and out, putting all of her attention on doing so. It is the only thing that gets her by these days. Since the first session of sewing the source of her torment has been much different. Somehow it is even more degrading. The man comments on the state of her body; “you’re getting thinner”, “you’re getting paler,” “you’re filthy.” At first she didn’t think anything of it, he’s just sick and vile like the woman he works for. Somewhere between the changing of days his words begin to take effect. She doesn’t know what they are doing to her, but she doesn’t like it. Whatever it is, it makes her almost want the old woman to begin sew bits and pieces to her. 

When he isn’t making unsavory remarks he tosses a bar of soap at her. “Go on clean yourself, you need it.” He sneers, knowing that she cannot. 

 

So far it has been six days since she’d last seen the old woman. Three of those days she was left completely alone. The other three he was there running through his dehumanizing antics, leaving Azula to assume that they were hunting for new things to patch onto her. 

 

“She’ll be here soon.” He informs her. He does so between bites of food. Real food. She tires to keep the longing at bay and from showing so obviously on her face. She gathers that it hadn’t worked when he waves the fire flakes in her face. Beneath his mask she can’t gauge his expression, but she imagines that he is wearing a smug smile to match what used to be her own. 

 

**.oOo.**

 

For someone on her way, the old woman took a long while. But she stands before Azula, fixing her with a stare with a wicked gleam. Today she wears a bamboo mask. A menacing wooden mimicry of a koala-sheep. 

 

“Do you like dragon-moose?” 

 

Fleetingly she thinks of spitting, “when their skins aren’t being sewn to my arms.” Too late, she realizes she did. The woman lets her know that she made a mistake by jabbing her cheek with one of the needles. She lets it dangle there as she moves to her trunk and withdraws a pair of scissors. Azula lets out a shuddering breath, the needle quivers. The woman is probably going split her lips to the ear and attach catgator jaws as the blood seeps down her neck. Her eyes grow distant, if she can numb herself now then the fear and pain will overtake her. She feels that she is going to break very soon, so she retreats into herself as her abductor edges closer, snapping the scissors open and closed. When she does reach Azula, the woman doesn’t slash at her mouth though. Instead she grabs a handful of hair; her nails dig deep into Azula’s skull and the needle drops, the woman takes no notice of that. She will pick it up off of the dirty ground and use it on the princess later. 

Azula feels the skin break where the woman clutches so tightly to her hair. 

And she begins to cut. 

Cut and chop carelessly. 

 

Azula watches her hair drift to the floor. She retreats even further within, she’d done this once before, to herself. It had been degrading when done by her own hand. But to have someone ripping at her hair…

And rip the woman does, at random times she plucks a single strand or a few at once. Azula winces, she can’t help it. Her captor works the scissors until there is more hair at her feet than on her head. Even still she persists until she has none at all left to shield her head from the biting draft of her earthy prison. She feels a wrinkled hand brush over her bear scalp, smaring grime all over it as she brushes away the last of the hairs. Azula lets her head dip, no longer having the mental capacity to hold it up. It only hurts her more, reminding her that she no longer has thick dark tresses to fall over her shoulders. She shivers and blinks away a few tears that managed to slip out.  She knows that she’s not the greatest person, she knows that she has done things--horrible things--but she couldn’t recall anything that warranted this. 

 

**.oOo.**

 

If she could, Azula would have curled herself into a shivering ball. As it were she finds herself still in a perfect X. She finds it hard to remember what it felt like to sleep in a cushiony bed swathed in luxurious blankets, but she knows that she misses it. She also can’t recall what a savory meal tastes like, nor what it was like to run a comb through her hair. She finds it hard to imagine herself immersed in a bath or to sleep well. She does, however, remember what it was like to feel the sun on her skin. So deliciously warm and forgiving. She clings to the vibrancy of the mental sensation until the morning when her captor reaps it away from her. 

 

It is hard to think of anything else, Azula finds, when the pelt of a moose-dragon is being sewn to her belly. Yet she gives it a try; thinking of things that pained her was oddly comforting and worked well to block out the physical torments. The needle’s stinging bite ailed her lesser and lesser the further she retreated into her mind. Her mind which has been stuck on the same question; what had she done to deserve her current misfortune? Zuko comes to mind first, she thinks of how she’d tormented him. How she’d made things trickier for him when she could have put in a good word for him. In particular she recalled smiling as her father charred his face. There is something wrong with her, she decides as though she hadn’t done so already when they were strapping her into a straightjacket.  Perhaps her conundrum is justified afterall. 

 

Up until the needle pierces her back for the first time, she had been able to get lost in her guilt. But she finds that her back--particularly at the spine--produces the most pain and she can no longer block it out. She is fully aware of that horrible lukewarm slimy sensation that the pelt leaves on her own skin. And completely aware of the smell of it. She thinks that it can’t get worse than her spine and then the woman begins threading the pelts over her chest. For no other reason than to draw more suffering, she adds some decorative embroidery at the nipple. She spies a faint trace of blood and finds herself feeling woozy. Woozy but not enough to escape the torment.

Azula doesn’t know who she’s apologizing to, but she does it. 

Silently. 


	3. Rotting Wings

She finds it hard to remember anything at all these days, she’s been here for so long. Her face is covered in many layers of grime. The foul stench of the place won’t leave her nose, she can almost taste it. Mostly she finds herself completely alone, an unexpected brand of anguish. She believes that it has been at least a month since she has seen anyone, even her captor. She wonders fleetingly (and not hopefully) if someone is looking for her. For company she only has the centi-worms and spider-ants--and if she’s particularly unlucky an elephant-rat or two. It is wearing away at her mind in a new way. She has been alone before, she recalls that much. But never completely. Back when she had been a human being she at least had nurses pretending to care. She had at least been able to  _ see  _ another human. Presently she isn’t even sure that there are any people in the world at all. Somewhere in her mind she thinks that she might be the only creature left. Left and waiting for her ration of unsavory food to reach its end. She has been doing her best to conserve it, but the heap of food is growing smaller. Sometimes the elephant-rats help themselves to her food, she supposes that it is better than the few days when they had nibbled on the pelts and her skin beneath them. 

Eventually, with the help of the rodents, her food does run out. For three days now she has been without and is almost starting to miss the rancid taste of it. 

 

At last the old woman joins Azula again and she sees why it has taken so long for her captor to get back.

 

The woman takes her time in setting up and Azula spends it in dread. She shivers recalling their last embroidery session. Faintly, her chest still gives a few phantom throbs at the thought of the needle. 

 

_ Inhale. Exhale.  _

This time the mantra does nothing at all to alleviate the fear. She is hard pressed to level her breathing at all. The old woman’s antics only agonize her worse with each progression; Azula struggles to come up with something worse than their last encounter. Unfortunately her warden isn’t as unimaginitive. 

 

The old woman clicks her tongue a few times, a sickly noise if Azula had to comment. But she doesn’t, she has learned to hold her tongue. Whoever she was before, under here, in this hole, she has no voice. 

No right to one. 

She knows this. 

She knows that her words will only lead her to hurt more. 

 

Today, though, is a special day. A grisly day. 

The man is there too. As per usual he ogles her, makes her feel generally squeamish. His hand brushes over her back between her shoulder blades. His touch makes her shudder, still she says nothing. The woman grumbles something and draws herself a paint brush. She mutters something else to the man and draws two small circles; one for each shoulder blade, just a little off center.

Azula’s eyes fall on the woman’s newest find. She wonders if the woman had actually come across a dragon for the man to slay or if it is simply a very elaborate, well-crafted costume piece. A closer look tells her that they are no dragon wings at all, but rather, rotten and pockmarked wolf-bat wings. The bones protrude where those demons had ripped them from their sockets. “This dragon won’t fly.” She hisses into Azula’s ear. The princess believed that her flight ended long ago. She feels herself falling deeper within. It’s the only thing she can do to protect herself. The old woman comes to face Azula, her Oni mask renders her as a presence even more menacing. She dips her paintbrush in red and sweeps it across Azula’s face from the corner of her mouth in an upward curve and repeats the stroke on the left side. “I missed that smile…”

 

The woman rubs Azula’s head. First she cuts the little of Azula’s hair that had grown back. She is not careful and knicks the former princess’ scalp constantly. The princess can ignore this, she is used to this kind of pain these days.

 

**.oOo.**

 

She knows that she is in for a whole new world of strife when the man holds her steady and rigid. Apparently the X bindings no longer suffice. Azula squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t like what she hears and she doesn’t want to see it too.

 

The drill meets her back with a relentless fury. Her body gives an impulsive jerk, one that is futile against the man’s hold. In some twisted irony she is thankful for his jarringly tight grip, it is the only thing that had, and continues, to save her from flinching and widening the drill’s circumference of damage. Her skin squashes and suckels as the drill fights its way in. The blades must be horrifically sharp if they can grind away at her muscle tissue. The drill bit is wedged deeply near her left shoulder blade, it is massive and she wonders if she can survive the hole it left in her back. She is already weak, she has already lost so much energy and blood to this place. She can’t really see herself lasting much longer. 

Somehow the thought is more comforting than fear inducing. 

 

Her elderly abductor sets the drill to the side, and with more force than a little old woman ought to have, jams the wolf-bat wing into the opening she’d just created. Azula shrieks, an agonized wail that splits her already hoarse throat. Her breathing grows dangerously erratic. She feels sick and light-headed. And merciful she drifts away from her distressing reality.

 

**.oOo.**

 

She wakes up unbound and sprawled out on the floor, face down. Her back still throbs; she can feel the pain encompassing her upper neck to her mid back, spanning even to her chest, and finding a heart at the two puncture marks by her shoulder blades. She can barely move, if she shifts even slightly, the wings do too and a fresh barrage of stabs fork up and down her back. Instead she lies as still as possible, sobbing.

She just wants to go home.    
Wherever that is.

 

Even her wails are too violent for her fragile body. The wrack it and rock the wings in the most unpleasant way, beginning a cycle. One where she cries and shakes, moving the wings so that the pain intensifies, which induces another choking sob that displaces the foreign appendages more. 

 

She fights to stop them, a battle that wears her down even further. But she has won.

Eventually her cries slow.

She fixes her eyes on the slits in the wall and stares blankly. The last rays of day are fading, she longs for the world they come from. 

 

Some hours from then she will drag herself to the slit, reach her hand--now thin enough to fit--out, and grasp at sunlight. 

Some hours from now, by chance--the same luck she supposedly had--her hand will be spotted by a lone figure. 


	4. Squeal

The air is rotten beyond reparation, centuries could pass and Azula feels as though the smell will never leave. At this point, it has probably been weaved into the atmosphere of the place. Decaying meat and death never truly leaves a place. Even if the odor was to fade in ages to come, there will still be residue of what had once been there. Even if she manages to leave the place, a part of her tormented soul will probably remain, etched into the sick energy of the place.   
  
Today, her cheek was pressed against the ground and she can’t feel anything anymore. She still can’t even remember how she got here. She just knows that she’s been here for a very long time and has long since given up on the notion that someone might be looking for her. Who would? She has no one left who would really care. She can hear the raspy breathing and knows that the suffering will begin again shortly. She closes her eyes and tries to shift her position. The chains fashioned around her wrists allowed her little room to do so. And the wings on her back make it that much harder, they are too heavy for her, the longer she bears them the worse the ache in her back grows. She thinks that it is infected, it feels that way. It smells that way. She silently prays that her captor will find a soft spot and let her go or at least, tend to the infection.    
  
She can hear the squeal of a hog-monkey, desperate and frenzied. It knows of its fate just as well as she does of hers. There is a sickly squelch followed by a moist sort of sucking and the screeching squeals amplify. And then comes that grotesque and dreadfully familiar tearing. A very fleshy rip and another gurgled cry. She cringes, wondering how many more animals the old woman is willing to slaughter to bring her suffering. To think, this person had called her a monster. Her captor kneels beside her smelling of blood and musk. The scent reminds her of her first night in the place and she wants it out of her nose.  

 

The old woman gives her a noteworthy kick, the blow falls on her ear and she wonders just how personal this is. She receives another kick and then a stomp on her ankle. She hears a crack, but the pain doesn’t register like it should; Azula’s mind has already shut down. She sees the man in the corner, he hasn’t been making much conversation with her these days, not even the taunting sort. Apparently she is too gaunt and too dirty for his crasser remarks now, she supposes that she’s grateful for it in a way. Her tormentor motions him over and the cycle begins. 

 

It hurts worse now, to resume the X position, the wings add so much weight that her legs cannot support. They are just one more set of things that she can’t hold up. “I have something to show you.” Her abductor rasps. She goes to her butcher table and picks up the hog-monkey head she had just severed. She holds it upside down, allowing the princess to view the gory inner bits of the thing. The grabs a knife and a spoon. With another vile wet noise, the woman scoops something out of the thing. Azula realizes with a growing sense of dread, that the woman is hollowing its head. At this point she is almost desensitized to the slurping noises. They continue for hours, it would seem that the woman is having trouble clearing the hog-monkey head to her liking. It only leaves Azula with a terrible anticipation and she wishes that the woman would just hurry up with it. The man certainly isn’t much solace.

 

She hears the clatter of a spoon and the woman stalks up and fits the pig’s head over Azula’s head. The smell is more putrid than anything she’s ever experienced here. Her eyes water and her stomach reels. She doesn’t think that she has much fight left in her. The woman removes the morbid mask. Azula wishes that the woman would take off her own mask, but she doesn’t need to for the princess to know that she is leering beneath it. She imagines a sinister, toothy grin. Finally she manages to choke out a question long overdue, “why are you doing this to me?”

 

“Why am I doing this to you?” The old hag repeats. “Why am I doing this to you? Who am I? You’ve caused a lot of trouble in Ba Sing Se. Your hand has indirectly caused so much suffering in a number of places.” She tsks. “I could be anyone, wouldn’t you say?” Azula doesn’t expect a real answer. But her abductor surprises her again in casting her oni mask aside. 

 

Azula tenses, not many things catch her off guard. But this…

“Wh-what?”

 

Li scowls at her with a sort of higher hatred Azula as never seen before. “She didn’t come, back you know.”

 

“Who didn’t?” 

 

“After you banished us.” She pauses, looking for all the world like she wants to drive the knife she had just been using straight into Azula’s chest. “Lo didn’t make it back. My sister, my dear sister…” Li is teary-eyed now. “You killed her.”

 

“I didn’t think she would die.” Azula whispers. It’s the truth, a world or so away, she did have a soft spot for her former advisors. “She wasn’t supposed to.”

 

“But she did!” This time she does bring the knife down, right into the princess’ thigh. 

 

Azula gnaws on her lip and hisses. “What about him?” She forces through pain-gritted teeth. 

 

“My son would help his mama with anything.”

 

“You have a son?” 

 

She takes the knife by the handle and twists. “I know what you’re doing. You’re stalling me.” 

 

Azula knows that the conversation is over, she isn’t getting anymore answers. Not that the last question had been of any importance. She catches the scent of the hog-monkey head before Li even hovers it over her head. Pride is no longer a luxury so Azula tries to whisper an apology. And it is genuine, she banished Lo in place of an execution. “Don’t do this to me, Li.” 

 

Her plea falls on def ears. So does the scream that she cannot suppress as Li fixes the hog-monkey head back over hers. She blacks out again with the prick of a needle showing her out. 

 

**.oOo.**

 

Coming to is a harder feat than ever. She doesn’t want to wake up at all, but when she does she is completely alone. She knows that it is raining in the world beyond the slits because she can hear the steady drip-drop of her leaking holding place. She is completely unbound, perhaps free to run. But she doesn’t. Instead she lays there, motionless save for erratic, nerve-riddled breathing. 

She wishes she were dead. 

 

It would be better than feeling the sticky humidity that the hog-monkey head trapped her face in. She tries to take it off but it hurts so terribly, she fears that if she tugs to hard the stitches will open her throat. She wonders, all the same, if that would be a bad thing. Crying makes things worse, she can’t wipe her tears away and they only make the moisture of the fleshy mask worse. But she can’t stop them either. 

 

Worse yet, she can’t bring herself to hate her captor anymore. Li, generous and patient Li, who had practically mothered her when her own had fled. 

 

She thinks back to a time when things were well in her life. She thinks that it might have been rather recent, but she isn’t sure. The face she cherished is beginning to fade in her mind’s eye, no matter how much she longed to recall it. And the name is lost on her. But the face had always been full of affection. The kind Azula craves with all of her battered soul. She wonders if it is possible that, that person is looking for her. She nuzzles her head--the hog-monkey’s head--against the floor. She hopes so, because she doesn’t have it in her to try for a grand escape. 


	5. Plea Without Words

“It’s almost over.” A voice whispers.

Azula can barely hear it.

It is bright.

Painfully so.

She thinks that she might be dead. But if that is the case, then why does her body still hurt her so. The voice comes again but it is muffled. She squints because the light is too much.

 

**.oOo.**

 

The ground beneath her is soft, her face sinks into it. It takes her a moment to process that it is not ground at all that she lays on. It is fabric, a mattress. She wants to weep all over again, because she is finally elsewhere. Somewhere cleaner, somewhere free of biting elephant-rats and scurrying centi-worms. She wants to weep because she knows that it isn’t real and that she will wake up in her abysmal prison.

She grips the sheets and cherishes them. They are clean and probably smell nice. Unlike she who carries the scent of a graveyard during a smoldering summer.

 

“Are you awake?”

 

Azula doesn’t speak, but she urges herself to sit up. The voice sounds so familiar, she thinks that she might know it, bit it has been so very long. She stares down at her palms, those hideous claws and the shame sets in, she isn’t really listening to the other girl speak. If only she had woken up in her own bed, with her own hands. She flexes them, but it still hurts to do so. The tiger-monkey claw fits her own hand in such an awkward way; there is a sort of resistance, a push back that keeps her fingers from stretching fully. And even without the resistance, each movement tugs at the stitches. She holds out her hand, but can’t seem to manage to vocalize what she wants of the other woman.

 

A look of compassion sets into the other woman’s face, it comforts Azula somehow. With both hands, she takes hold of Azula’s clawed one with a foreign tenderness. She holds Azula’s hand close to her chest. “We’ll get these offa you.” She promises. 

 

Again, Azula can’t bring herself to talk. She thinks that maybe she has forgotten how to do anything vocal that isn’t shrieking or moaning in pain or crying. She doesn’t know if she remembers how to speak properly…intellectually. She doesn’t want to speak at all if she can do it eloquently.

 

Realizing that Azula isn’t going to reply, she adds, “My father—you know my father…”

 

She doesn’t though. She swears that she doesn’t.

 

“He’s really good at these kinds a things. He ken undo those stitches and find a way to work with these.” She brushes her fingers over those Agni-awful wings.

 

Azula must have made a face because the woman elaborates more. “Don’t worry. He’s worked with machines that require attention to detail and very careful hands. He ken fix you up and it won’t even hurt.”

 

She makes it sound like an easy feat, but Azula is skeptical. She knows much better. She knows that it will hurt, she believes that she has only ever known pain and that it might be all that she will ever know. But this woman, this other woman with her charming and familiar accent and her reassuring words makes her think that perhaps her ailing will come to an end.

She wants to believe her.                      

 

Azula cups her free hand over the other woman’s, drawing a bright smile from her. She has a nice smile, the princess decides. Her complexion is on the tanner side and dotted with freckles. Her hair is long, brown in hue, and dark. Her eyes are darker still. Suddenly her expression goes dark as well. “You are Azula right?”

 

This woman remembers her, but she can’t remember the woman.

She doesn’t know why she can’t remember.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin begins to think that she has leapt to conclusions. A whole lot of wishful thinking. Whoever this was, didn’t seem to know her at all. The animal skins hide any and all distinguishing features. There is nothing at all to indicate identity. If she is being honest with herself, she doesn’t even know if the person under the pelts and hog-monkey mask is male or female. But the height is right. She’d never met anyone else as small as Azula—not someone her age anyhow. For all she knows, though, she could be holding the hand of an older child.

 

Suddenly it feels strange to hold the hand so lovingly, so she puts it down just in case. She tries to anyhow, those clawed hands won’t let go. She finds herself instinctively chilled by a clawed hand clasped over hers. There are human hands beneath those, she forcefully reminds herself.

The form seems to slump over and their breathing becomes more forceful, heaving almost. The figure’s shoulders seem to shake. It takes Zirin a moment to realize that the other is crying. It is the blunt proof that she needed. The person she holds is human.

 

Azula or not, Zirin takes her—yes, the cries are definitely female—into her arms. She does so with care, and with even more attention, she rubs the woman’s back. She has to admit, it feels nice to hold someone again, someone who isn’t her younger brother. The woman in her arms cries for a long time. Zirin hopes that it will be the last time because it is such a hopeless, despairing sound. One that leaves her heart aching.

 

Her father will be home soon, she knows that things will get easier for the trembling woman once the hog-monkey head is removed. Zirin just hopes that he won’t flee at the sight of the tortured woman—he always did have a bit of a faint heart. She thinks of meeting her father at the door, but can’t bring herself to leave the woman. Not with her weeping the way she is. Zirin can’t imagine her father being unsympathetic—not after having her sent to the institution. To the very place she’d met Azula. As of late he has been taking extra care to please her, she supposes that, at the loss of Azula, he fears that he might have to send her back there if he isn’t careful.

 

She can’t stand it any longer so she asks again, “Azula is that you?”

 

Still, the woman doesn’t answer. She has stopped crying, but she isn’t talking either. She supposes it doesn’t matter; Azula or not, Zirin knows that she will take care of her.


	6. The Release

The other woman sleeps fitfully, not that Zirin can’t blame her. She didn’t expect her to sleep well with a hog-monkey’s face stitched over hers. Zirin does her best to accommodate, she stays with her, occasionally fetching her a glass of water and readjusting her blankets. When the woman speaks of discomfort, she retrieves more pillows for her.  In the middle of the night, Zirin hears her cry out, pleading for someone to stop. Yelling at them to stay away. Zirin decides to gather herself some pillows and blankets and curl up on the floor in the other’s room. She sets her sleeping supply down first and then drops herself onto the bed, taking that clawed hand. She wants to offer words of comfort but doesn’t know what to say. ‘You’re going to be okay’ sounds terribly insufficient and ‘nothing is going to hurt you’, seems lackluster. So she says nothing and simply sits with her until she seems to be sleeping once more.  

 

She wakes up again and again. Each time with just as much intensity. Sometimes speaking to her captor other times whimpering to herself about how it hurt, how everything hurt.  Zirin wants to ease that pain but can’t, not until morning anyhow. Just where is her father? He always seems to work later when she needs him.

Eventually she can’t take it anymore, and she thinks that the other woman can’t either. So this time when she gets out of bed, it is to go concoct a sleeping draught. She mixes it and slips it between the woman’s lips. She is tired, she must be, because she lets the mixture claim her very quickly.

 

Zirin’s father is home when she wakes. Based upon his expression she assesses that he has not yet seen her new companion. She ponders over what she is going to say as she picks at her breakfast. “I need your help, father.”

 

“I tol’ja, if ya break yer dresser again, I ain’t fixin’ it.”

 

“It ain’t my dresser this time.” Zirin rolls her eyes. “I found someone…she needs help.”

 

He pinches between his brows and sighs. “Ya can’t keep bringin’ people in. I ain’t able to help everyone.”

 

“It’s really important this time, Okon.” She insists, she only addresses him by name when she wishes to be taken seriously. This time it wasn’t some stray runaway in need of a place to stay. This time it wasn’t a drunk friend who needed a place to stay until they could make it home. “I promise.”

 

“Bring ‘er down.”

 

Zirin makes her way back down the hall. The woman is still sleeping, she feels bad rousing her. She can’t read the woman’s expression beneath the hog-monkey head, but she can’t imagine that it’s anything optimistic. “My father is home.” She decides to note as she helps her out of bed. Zirin isn’t sure if she nodded or if it was just another passive motion. Her walking is somewhat disoriented and Zirin finds herself supporting her more often than not. She is so fragile, Zirin fears that she will break her if she does the wrong things. She helps her into a chair and hopes that her father won’t holler.  She sees a muscle work in his jaw and he seems to clench his cup tighter. “What happened to ‘er?”

 

“I don’t know ‘sactly.” Zirin confesses. “I found her this way.”

 

She watches him walk away, left to assume that he wants no part in this one. “I’m sorry, I thought that he’d be…” she realize that she didn’t actually know how she expected him to react to such a grotesque display. She decides that it would be worth it to feed the woman. A few minutes into trying to convince her to eat, her father reappears and motions Zirin to follow. She takes the other’s hand. It is a rare occurrence that her father allows her into his work room. Blueprints line the walls, overflow from draws, spill over tables, and scatter the floor. Her father isn’t the most organized. To go with the blueprints, the floor is a mine field of screws, bolts, and cogs both rusty and shiny. She is sure that there are tools somewhere but it is hard to pick them out under heaps of scrap metal and spare parts. She wants to apologize for the messy state of the place but she gets the sense that it is the last thing on her companion’s mind. She watches her father ruffle through a few things. He pulls out tweezers and a set of scissors varying in sizes and shapes and sets it on his workbench. He spares them a look and lights a fire in his palm and holds a one pair—the slimmest, most precise looking pair—above the flame.  He does so for at least ten minutes, maybe more until he feels as though the scissors are sterile. “Find some bandages.” He requests as he nears.  “‘N some ‘erbs; gol’enrod ‘n calendula.” He adds after a speedy inspection of her back. “Should be some in the garden.” He returns back to his workbench, she sees him pull out his goggles. The ones that had always freaked Zirin out to a degree, with their own share of cogs and lenses, they made him look like part of a machine. Even knowing how effectively the magnifying glasses attached to them helped him, she couldn’t help but shudder. Just before he shoos her away, she sees him put the things on. She finds herself irrationally chilled and hopes that the other woman isn’t as fazed.

 

She comes back with a collection of plants in her arms as well as the mortar and pestle that she knows he would request next. He hasn’t started on the woman yet. She doesn’t get to ask him why that is because he is already instructing her to crush and blend the goldenrod with the calendula. As she does so, he fetches a large vile of aloe. “When yer done, mix ‘em into this ‘n add a sprinkle ‘a firelily powder.”

Zirin doesn’t question him, she has long since learned that there is a method to his disorder.

 

The other woman sits very still, alternating her attention between the two of them. She finishes crushing the herbs and pours it into the aloe. And when the firelily petals are sufficiently ground, Zirin drops a pinch into the aloe-herb gel.  

 

Her father takes the gel and dabs it along the stitch work that spans around the woman’s neck. She flinches very visibly so Zirin goes to her and squeezes her hand. But after that she doesn’t jerk again and holds herself steady as Okon makes the first few snips.

 

The liquid that drains out is reddish brown with hints of yellow. It smells absolutely and unapologetically foul. Zirin crinkles her nose and her eyes practically water. Her stomach churns again, for the woman who was trapped within the fleshy mask. She notes with a degree of horror, that her father had only opened a small slit. With the second and third snips, the liquid pours out with more speed and she detects the copper overtones of blood.

Blood, sweat, and dead hog-monkey flesh, it was beyond rancid.

She knows that her father has seen some things in the war, but she hadn’t taken into account that he might have smelled somethings too—not until she catches the stony look on his face. She wonders what could possibly have smelled worse than this.

 

“Soap ‘n water, Zizi.” Clearly he has made note of her discomfort and her unwillingness to admit it. She is thankful for the command and retreats to bring him a good bar. Free of the putrid odor, Zirin sucks in a few plentiful breaths. She isn’t ready to return but shovels down her reluctance.

 

Okon is more than halfway around her neck by now. He pauses his work and holds out his hand for the soap and water. Zirin obliges. He cleans the woman’s neck to the best of his ability with the hog-monkey head still in the way and then he adds a healthy coating of aloe gel. “Hol’ it up.”

 

Zirin’s face scrunches to the fullest it can, but she slips on a pair of gloves. “Do I have to?”

 

“I’m doin’ this fer ya, ya gotta do some’a the dirty work.”

 

She should have expected that response. Biting back a quip or two she holds the flap of hog-monkey skin away from the freshly cleaned part of the woman’s neck. Now the process seems to go even slower. _Clip, snip, snip, clip,_ …

Followed by a few wet sounds, Zirin’s eardrums are having a most unpleasant time.

 

“Help me pull it off.”

 

The slurping noises grow much worse and, finally, comes a soft suckling noise as the suction releases. He discards the rotting hog-monkey head into the nearest rubbish bin with a sickly splatter.

 

Her face is a mess; splotches of blood—both her own and hog-monkey and a coat of mud mix unpleasantly with chunks of rotting meat and other unsavory liquids, sweat and pus if she had to guess. Maybe even bile.

Disturbingly, Zirin still can’t recognize the face beneath it all.

 

The woman grips the seat of the chair ferociously, shaking harder than Zirin has seen yet. Her breathing is far from level and Zirin doesn’t know how to calm her. She is trembling so hard, Zirin fears that she might pitch herself off of the chair.

 

“Clean ‘er up.” Her father commands. “I’ll make summore aloe gel ‘n another bar a soap fer later.”   

 

She has mixed feelings about getting anywhere near the sludge on the woman’s face, but nods anyways. She feels horrible for being so disgusted by the woman she was trying to help. She truly hoped that the woman couldn’t sense it on her, she didn’t want to make her feel ashamed for something beyond her control.

 

“Follow me.” Zirin motions. When the woman doesn’t leave the chair, she takes her hand again and helps her to their sorry excuse of a bathroom. She pumps water into the dented basin, assuming the woman has had enough of warm and stuffy, she doesn’t heat the cool water. She dips a rag in, runs a bar of soap over it, and begins rubbing at the woman’s face. At least thrice, she has to empty and discard dirty water and refill the basin. It is only on the third refill that she begins to see the woman’s face beneath the grime.  

By the fifth refill she is crying softly to herself because she recognizes the face she uncovers.


	7. Severing Wings

Zirin reaches out and strokes her cheek, the same cheek she had touched time and time before. She tilts her head and takes in the sight of her. Those golden eyes seem to have lost their shine to months of pain and distress. And her hair… she only has it in patches. Zirin brushes her hand over Azula’s head. It is somehow even more disturbing to view the various animal pelts and the clawed talons now that the hog-monkey head is off. Because now she can say for sure that they don’t belong. Because now she can see completely, the suffering they bring their wearer. And those wings, a paste-like yellowy ooze weeps from the places where they were jabbed in. Worser still, Zirin thinks that Azula’s skin is starting to grow around them. Her father will have to make quick work, the more her skin mold and fuse with the foreign wings, the harder they will be to detach.  But he very well can’t work on her again now. He doesn’t have the supplies and she can’t imagine that Azula is ready for round two just yet.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me that it was you?” Zirin asks. She knows that she isn’t going to get an answer. Regardless she pulls the princess into her arms, taking care to work around her wings. She doesn’t return the embrace, leaving a faint ache in Zirin’s heart. Azula tugs out of the hug. Looking into her eyes is like staring into dismay. She has seen Azula in moods before, but she has never seen the woman’s eyes so blank and hollow, so empty of all emotion save for a dash of agony and a flicker of fear, distrust.  

Distrust.

It stabs at Zirin, to know that the trust she fought to establish with her seemed to have evaporated. And to no doing of her own.

 

She finds herself wanting to yell at the princess. To shout at her for this newfound mistrust. It is irrational she knows, but she can’t help but be a little bitter. She knows that it will do her no good to say anything about the matter so she, instead, offers Azula something to eat.

 

With the hog-monkey head cleared away, she no longer needs Zirin to feed her. She struggles at first, to lift the chopsticks with awkward claws in the way. And struggles further to position them correctly. “Let me.” Zirin tries.  Azula shoots her the most agitated look, as though she is fantastically offended by the offer. Zirin knows then, that she is still Azula beneath all of that torment and fear. The same prideful and proud princess she’d come to know. She retracts her hand. “Kay, sorry.”

She watches her fumble with them for a while more before she finally gets a handle on them. However clumsily, she feeds herself. She eats fast, giving Zirin another painful reminder that she had been holed up in the ground only days before. She thinks that this may be the first time that Azula has eaten a decent meal in months. She sure seemed to be savoring the food, and Zirin always thought herself to be a horrid chef. Regardless she points to her empty bowl. Zirin can take a hint, she is requesting a second helping. She doesn’t really want to cook another serving but she promised that she would take care of the woman. If that means extra cooking and more dishes, she will do it.

 

Eventually, Azula looks up. “Thank you.” It is the first thing she has said while awake since being rescued. Zirin almost goes teary-eyed again. She never thought she would hear that voice again. Though it is much weaker than she remembers, she clings to the sound of it.

 

**.oOo.**

 

The morning after brings more hurt. Zirin has long since learned that one has to suffer to heal in full. Her father and his work with Azula only reinforces this. Zirin wasn’t sure that it could get much worse than seeing the hog-monkey head come off. But the wings, those are proving to be worse. Her father orders her to mash herbs and mix aloe again. She hears him grumble something about the infection and how it treating it is going to be a tricky feat.

 

She watches him clan his hands and pull out his set of scissors. He inspects Azula’s back for a moment before drawing a conclusion. He gloves his hands and pulls at a flap of moose-dragon fur. The one closest to the wings. “Stitched on good.” He grumbles and Zirin knows that this will be tedious work. She isn’t sure if he will even get to the wings themselves today. He pulls out a pair of scissors even smaller than the ones he just tried. He cuts the first thread and then the one below it and the one below that. Azula sits rigid, visibly tensing with each snip, bracing herself for some kind of pain that doesn’t seem to come. The first patch of moose-dragon falls to the floor. It would seem that she is a morbid quilt of the things. Zirin wonders if all of it is moose-dragon fur, she imagines that there might be other animals tossed into the mix.

 

“Aloe gel, Zizi.” Okon requests.

 

Azula hisses as he applies the aloe-herb mix to where the stiches had once been. She tries to push his hand away.

 

“Let me do it, fa.” Zirin takes the gel and takes Azula’s hand and finishes running it over the line of needlework.  She backs off to let her father continue. He carefully clips away at another pelt. One after another, pausing only to let Zirin apply aloe. They work until every last pelt is removed and discarded alongside the hog-monkey head, which is collecting maggots and flies in the rubbish bin. Zirin shudders to see that some are clinging to the pelts that her father had just removed. They had burrowed there, probably when Azula was still confined. And they had been feeding and growing larger. She sees Azula’s eyes fall on the pelts and the insects thriving off of them. It disturbs Zirin to note that Azula doesn’t seem surprised to see them, she knew that they were there. She knew very well.

 

The longer her father stares at Azula, the more closely he inspects her, the more her discomfort seems to grow. Zirin watches her shift uncomfortably. “He’s not going to hurt you…or say anything about you.” She offered. “He’s just trying to figure out what to do next.” She doesn’t think that her words helped, Azula doesn’t trust her Okon. As his eyes scan the princess, Zirin makes an observation of her own.

Another thing that brings a fluttering to her belly.

Seeing Azula’s naked body for the first time, it occurs to her that the woman’s once perfect, flawless skin is going to be a mess of scars resembling a pai sho board. The stitchwork had been so uneven, just one more slap. She can’t imagine that Azula is taking it well, she hadn’t even assessed the damage for herself yet.

 

Zirin hands the aloe gel to Azula, thinking that she’d rather apply it herself. She does so wordlessly, her expression as unreadable as it usually is with her. As she tends to her own injuries Okon rummages through his drawers.

 

“I have anuter job fer ya, Zirin.”

 

“What do you need me to do?”

 

“I needja to get summore things from the garden. Ash daisy, chili pepper juice, ‘n orange jade.”

 

Zirin wrinkles her brows. “I’ll go ‘n get it.” She spares another look at Azula. Whatever is to come is unpleasant enough to warrant ingredients for a potent sleep inducer. She takes to the garden to fetch the plants. When she comes back her father is holding a saw, he takes care to keep it out of Azula’s line of sight. She watches him set it to the side and pick up the aloe paste, a rag, and a bucket of water. He begins scrubbing at the place where her skin seems to fuse with the bone of wolf-bat wing. The place that leaks a yellow-green and a coppery red. She needs the cleaning, Zirin finds it hard to watch and wonders if she should just head outside again and being concocting the liquid remedy to fight infection fever. She is about to step back outside when Azula lashes out. She does so in a weak but damaging display of teal-blue. Her father grunts as he hits the floor, muttering a couple of curses.

She is in so much pain, Zirin notes, enough to strike at the hand that tries to help.

 

“Hol’ onta yer girlfren.” Okon hollers as he does when he is under pressure. His face is contorted into an angry scowl which does little to reassure his attacker that she is in tentative hands. Thing wings bob and she could see it on Azula’s face that it ails her so when they do. But she brings fire to her palms again and tosses them with a furious yell.

 

“Stop it!” Zirin shouts. And when she doesn’t Zirin yells louder. She is worried for her dad as much as she is for Azula. Azula who is more akin to a cornered animal than her regal self. Zirin’s worry makes sparks a rage in her, one she is hard pressed to control at the best of times. “Don’ touch ‘im, Azula. He’s tryin’ to help. Don’ touch ‘im.”

Her words fall on def ears. She still has the sense to not body slam Azula. But that sense is fading rapidly as Azula’s barrage of fire grows more hazardous. Her father, a non-bender and the most non-violent person she’s ever met, sits passively. She knows what he is thinking, he doesn’t want to hurt the woman he is supposed to be helping. No sense in solidifying that distrust. But Zirin can’t let her hurt him and before she knows it, she and Azula are on the ground.

For a moment the princess’ eyes are wide they are almost frozen. But that suspended state is broken by a the most ungodly scream Zirin has ever heard and she realizes that she had partially ripped one of the wings off.

 

Her heart leaps, she feels sick. Azula’s blood is streaming and Zirin is afraid that it can’t be stopped.  She can observe that some muscle tissue has been plucked with the wing. She actually gets sick.

And her cries.

Zirin has never heard someone cry like that. A terrifying cross between a wail and a shriek. Maybe she is alternating between the two. But it puts a decent hole in her heart, because she knows that it’s her fault. She only wanted to protect her father.

Okon himself is on his feet again. This time Azula lets him have his way, but the act of picking her up alone has her eyes rolling back. They wouldn’t need the sleep inducer after all. It was too much for her.

 

“Hol’ ‘er wings steady.” Okon demands.

 

Zirin doesn’t need extra coaxing, she holds the wings in place to the best of her ability as Okon lays Azula facedown atop a makeshift operating table. It is the one he usually uses when he’s working on his bigger machines.

 

Zirin huddles in the corner feeling dreadfully ashamed at how she handled things. Her father finishes cleansing the infection. He is mumbling to himself debating over whether it is best to stitch the skin split from pulling the wing or if he should get on with whatever he was about to do before that. It doesn’t matter, Zirin has already concluded that she no longer has any business being there. She’s already made a mess of things and she can’t imagine that she instilled any trust in Azula. She stands up and pushes the door open. She only has it slightly ajar when she hears a gruff, “where ya goin’ ta?”

 

“My room, father.”

 

“No, no. I needja.”

 

She pauses in the doorframe. “For what? I think I helped a’nuff for today.”

 

Okon raises the saw. “I needja ta hol’ ‘er wings steady again. I gotta saw through the bone, make id easier ta take out.”

 

Zirin cringes she can’t stomach it. The smell of infection is awful and she doesn’t want to see how badly she’d worsened Azula’s condition. But she does, she holds the wings in place as her father begins sawing through them. It takes too long, much too long. Azula gives a sleepy hum and her eyes crack open. Zirin leaves the wings to retrieve the ash lily, orange jade, and pepper juice mixture. Taking care to no breath it in herself, she wafts the fragrance in Azula’s direction until she fades out again. And Okon resumes his work until the bone is severed completely through.

 

“This is gonna be the hard part, Zizi.”

It is a warning.

He begins snipping away the excess skin that has accumulated around the wolf-bat bone. When this is accomplished he places a hand firmly between her shoulder blades and yanks at the protruding bone. It comes out with a slurp.

 

“It’s not gonna stop bleeding is it, father, we have to put it back.” She points at the gaping hole in Azula’s back.

 

She sees it on his face, that he agrees. He doesn’t have the medical skill to plug the hole in a way that a professional healer would. It is late realized, but Zirin finally thinks about just what they were doing. They should hand her over to a real healer. They should give her to the royal doctors. But now she doesn’t have that kind of time. The blood flow is constant and urgent.

 

“Ken ya clean it fer me?” He hands Zirin the bone. His own hands are busy wadding a clean towel and stuffing it into the opening. It will only slow the bleeding for so long, so Zirin makes the cleansing quick. They’re going to lose her, she can’t see how a person could survive this. Once the cleansed bone is back in Okon’s hand, he removes the cloth and sticks the bone back in place. He riffles through another drawer and comes away with a tin of blasting powder. He sprinkles it around the bone. “I needja ta fireben’.”

 

Zirin hesitates. _She isn’t awake, she can’t feel it._ She repeats it over and over as she cauterizes the wound.

She has to keep up with the mantra much longer.

They have to replicate the process on the left wing. If they are going to leave it where it is, they have to clean it. Clean it and shorten it.

 

Again Zirin feels like crying for Azula, not only is she going to be a mess of stitch marks, but those bones are there to stay. Her father manages to shorten them enough for her to be able to lay on her back again in time. But she can’t imagine that it will ever be pleasant.

 

“That’s a’nuff fer tanight.” Okon declares.

 

Zirin doesn’t protest, it was more than enough. She doesn’t know what else there is to do, save for keeping an eye on the infection. But she somehow feels that there has to be something else, something to make Azula feel better about the removal that is to dangerous to preform in full. She contemplates it as she dresses the woman. At least that would hand the princess some dignity.

 

The princess is still drowsy so Zirin has to help her into bed. She can feel tension ebbing from her. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t let you hurt my father. He was just tryin’ to help.” She waits for a reply that Azula won’t give. “He really was, see.” She brings Azula to a mirror and lifts the night shirt some. “They’re smaller so they won’t get in the way.”

 

Azula blinks at her reflection and then averts her eyes. She isn’t any pleased with the results, Zirin can tell. All of that suffering and the wings are still there. If only she can find a way to make something pretty out of something dreadful.

 

“Please don’t be mad at me.”

 

The worst thing is that Azula doesn’t seem furious. She is so far from who she had been and it scares Zirin. On a normal day she would probably find herself in an Agni Kai for her life. But today, the princess looks at her forlornly. All the same she is relieved to know that Azula isn’t going to push her away. Maybe she realizes that intentions had been at their best. Zirin allows herself to believe that, Azula is smart. She can read a person. She helps Azula find a place on the bed and bundles her up in blankets. “We cleaned the infection.” She holds out her liquid remedy. “You’ll have to drink this to get fightin’ the one you already have. Every day, ‘til it’s gone.”

 

Azula takes the cup in her hands and sips at the mix of herbal juices. She makes a face, bitter was never a favorite flavor of hers. But Zirin watches her drain the cup. She holds the cup out for Zirin to take back. She sets it to the side and urges Azula to rest her head and close her eyes.

 

She longs to run her fingers through Azula’s hair as she always used to when comforting the firebender. But the princess’ long locks are gone and she no longer responds to touch…not affectionate touches anyhow. She is so damaged and Zirin doesn’t know how to fix her. She think and fears that Azula is gone. She takes her hand anyhow and strokes it until she sees her eyes close. She wants to give her cheek a gentle kiss but can’t imagine her receiving it well. So she holds back on a motion that used to be so natural.

 

Long into the night she peers at the other woman. Her eyes never seem to leave the small bumps that jut out from her back. She takes in the sound of Azula’s breathing and savors it, the princess is at peace. At least until morning. For once she seems to be sleeping soundly, she imagines that slumber comes much easier now that she is free of the hog-monkey head and the worst of thing wings.

 

The wings…

How darkly poetic it is that a fierce dragon of a woman is ailed by wings…

The wings simply weren’t right for this dragon.

An idea finally comes.


	8. Blueprints

She poses the idea to her father. “Do you think that you can do it?”

 

“Do ya think that she’s gonna let me?” He is still weary from the event days prior.

 

She knows that he is more than capable of accomplishing executing the blueprints she spent the night creating. She just has to get Azula to cooperate. The princess is still sleeping, sleeping and running a very high fever. “She will.” Zirin answers as she mixes up another fever remedy. “It shouldn’t be painful, just uncomfertable. I think she only reacts bad if you go ‘n hurt her.” In a way that was how Azula had always been, she just doesn’t hide it anymore.

 

Okon doesn’t give her a definitive yes or no. But she leaves the room anyhow—purposely neglecting to take the blueprints with her. She knows that when she comes back down that the blueprints will no longer be on the table and her father will have arranged the necessary devices.

 

Zirin sits the groggy princess up and tips the glass. Azula seems to go slack and falls against her. Zirin doesn’t move her. Instead she waits for the princess to move herself. She doesn’t do that for a very long while.  Eventually Zirin decides that it is time to bathe the princess. Simply scrubbing the infected area is no longer cutting it. She leads Azula to the bathroom, fills the basin, and leaves to retrieve a bar of soap and some shampoo. Shampoo, she gnaws on the inside of her cheek before placing it back on the shelf. She finds Azula already sitting in the water when she gets back. Her legs are drawn up to her chest as she shivers against the chill of the water and she looks miserable. Zirin thinks that she is going out of her way to not look at the fresh scars splayed all over her body.

 

“Do you want me to…” Zirin motions to the bar of soap.

 

Azula holds out her hand and Zirin takes that as a no. It doesn’t matter, it is probably good for the princess to do things on her own again anyways. Personal hygiene and upkeep had always been a priority to and a high point for her.

 

She watches the woman run the soap carefully over her arms.

She feels weird watching.

She doesn’t know why.

 

She has seen Azula without clothing before. Many times in fact. Most times, Azula had been the one to initiate it. But that seems so far off. She wonders if there’s anything left of that. Azula herself is very different…

Very subdued.

 

But she doesn’t shoo Zirin away so, she remains. Her deep brown eyes linger on Azula, she hopes that she isn’t making her uncomfortable or self-conscious, not that she’s even seen the princess doubt herself before.

 

It is only when Azula stands, water running off of her in rivulets, that Zirin remembers that she had forgotten the towels and a change of clothes. The princess stares expectantly. She tries not to keep her waiting for too long. Mostly Azula dries herself, but then she hands Zirin the towels and turns around. It takes Zirin a moment to realize that Azula is weary of drying her back with such new wounds to watch for. So Zirin gently runs the towel over her back and—with more care—dabs at the areas closer to where the wings had once been. She notes to herself how pale the princess’ completion is, save for her blotchy, fever-flushed cheeks.

 

Zirin decides that she will take Azula into the garden. She could use the sunlight and she could use some fresher air. It is strange, Zirin notes, that before now, she has never seen Azula in her clothing before. Usually she stuck to her own attire, likely because it was more elaborate and made from pricier materials. Regardless of the simplicity, Zirin thought that the change suited her well.  It is also good to see her on her feet again as opposed to being confined to a bed. “Azula and I are goin’ ou’side for a bit.” She calls to Okon.

 

He is in his work room, she notes with a smile.

And the blueprints are no longer on the table.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Zirin wonders if she should run the idea by Azula first, she gets a sense that the princess wouldn’t care what happened to her at this point as long as it didn’t cause her any more pain. “Are you feeling any better?” She asks once they are situated in the garden amid a host of fragrant flowers. Mint takes precedence over all other scents.

 

Azula pucks a firelily and twirls it absently between her fingers.

 

“At least a little?” Zirin tries again.

 

She thinks that she notices Azula nod affirmatively. The firebender tosses the lily aside and begins running her hands through the grass, Zirin sees the longer blades sprouting up from the cracks between her fingers. She assumes that Azula is pleased to see lush nature again. To have the sun on her skin again. To feel a warm breeze once more. But she still can’t seem to bring herself to smile, Zirin wishes that she would. Her smile is nice. She touches the back of her hand to Azula’s cheek, it is hot, too much so. Azula’s hand comes around her wrist and for a moment she thinks that the woman remembers the more tender times, that’s why she smiles. Only seconds later though, she finds that Azula simply did so, to move Zirin’s hand away from her.

Zirin doesn’t understand. “What did I do wrong?” She finally asks. “I found you! saved you!” She doesn’t mean to be harsh, but her impatience is taking its toll. “Again!” She adds, “I saved you again…” Her temper dies down and she trails off. She didn’t even realize that she had stood up so she sits back down. Azula watched the display stoically, it both aggravates and relieves Zirin. She rubs her forehead. “I jus’ don’t get you sometimes.” She thinks, not for the first time, that whatever happened to her in that dank cellar had frayed Azula’s already questionably stable mind beyond repair.

 

Without warning, Azula stands. She is wandering and Zirin knows that she should stop her. But all the same she kind of wants to let Azula explore, at least that way she has something to do. At least it would give her some sense of control. So she lets the princess lead the way. Mostly they wander through fields, the same ones where Zirin is sometimes sent to collect herbs that aren’t found in her own garden. Eventually though, Azula finds the nearby village. “A’rite, I think that’s enough walkin’ for today, we should head back, yeah?”

 

Apparently, no. Azula draws nearer to the village. She hesitates, Zirin wonders if Azula really wants to encounter other people—she hopes that the princess will shy away. But she does not. Then again, Zirin thinks that maybe seeing other people would do her as good as a little sunlight. She had been so isolated for so long…

“A’rite, fine, we can go into town.” Zirin mutters as if it had ever been her choice to make.

 

She watches Azula pick up trinkets and beaded necklaces from random stalls, just to look at them and set them down again, much to the annoyance of the vendors who were hoping to earn at least a coin or two.

Faintly she wonders if any of them recognize their princess.

 

She passes various food stands, pausing to graze her fingers over a large peach. It only costs a coin, so Zirin buys it for her. No doubt, Azula could pay her back if need be—not that she plans on getting pushy over one coin.

Azula chews on the peach as they wander, occasionally she stumbles. “Are you dizzy?” Zirin asks. But the firebender dismisses the question and moves forward like nothing had happened. As they near the edge of the village they come to more curious things; a vendor selling superstitious trinkets, a man selling animal bones (Azula cringes away from this one very quickly), an older woman, scantily clad and adorned with faux gold preforming a strange and ancient dance, and a man with more tattoos than she’d ever seen on a person. He is quite a sight, his earlobes are stretched to fit small rocks in them. She wonders if he’d done the ink himself. Azula watches him for a moment before moving on. She finishes the peach and discards the pit.

 

Halfway home she seems to be losing her spark, her stride is becoming sluggish. Eventually Zirin is concerned enough to carry her the rest of the way back, regardless of looks she is shot and the other silent protests she is given.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Okon refused to work on her until her fever had come to pass. It seemed to last ages, but it finally did. Zirin instructs the princess to lay on her stomach and trust her. Turst. It is something Azula doesn’t give easily and Zirin resents that all of the trust she had earned was taken by circumstance. To something that wasn’t her fault at all. She is thankful, however, that she had built enough trust back to be able to persuade Azula to let Okon help her. She hands her shirt to Zirin and lays back down on the table, with her cheek resting on her arms.

 

“Yer gonna feel some pressure. It ain’t gonna hert but it ain’t ‘sactly pleasant neither.” Okon warns. “Hol’ still.” He turns around holding a drill.

 

Her composure slips immediately, she is on her feet, hollering, fire in her palms. The fear in her eyes is frenzied and unchecked. Zirin is angry that she didn’t account for this. Of course drills didn’t bode well with Azula, a drill is probably what drove the wolf-bat bone into her in the first place.

 

Zirin takes Azula by the wrists, doing everything she can to avoid hurting her. “He ain’t gonna hurt you, Azula. I promise. It ain’t gonna be the same as what they did.” She fights to keep her voice soft and level as the princess struggles against her. “Trust me. You gotta.” She regrets not disclosing her idea in full.

 

“She don’t hav’ ta do this if she ain’t want it.” Okon says. “We ken try again some other time.”

 

Zirin knows that his word is final. She knows that it doesn’t matter anyways, there is no way she’d be getting Azula back on that table. At least not then.

 

The next day is a different matter. Azula is calmer. Zirin watches her eat breakfast, thankful that the princess has her appetite back again and twice as thankful that she can keep her food down. With the fever a few days over, she—though pale—is looking at least some healthier. Just in case Zirin helps her apply aloe to the scars and the skin around the wolf-bat bones.

 

She decides to bring it up again. “They ain’t have to be ugly.” She motions to the jutting bones. “The can be somethin’ beautiful, you know.”

 

Azula’s gaze catches hers and she knows that the firebender is listening.

 

“I jus’ need you to let my father do his thing. He’s real careful. He ain’t hurt you yet has he? Not if he could help it.”

 

Zirin doesn’t know that her words have any effect until Azula is laying back on the table with her shirt off and her cheek nuzzled against her arms again.

 

“This time, ya hol still.” He instructs and reminds her that she’ll feel some pressure.

 

Azula, Zirin finds, is rather good at keeping still.  She tenses some at the sight of the drill but lets him bring it to the wolf bone. He is working to hollow it out, the only movement made by the princess is that which is created by the rocking of the drill. Her face contorts in displeasure at points, but otherwise she takes it well.

 

The bone is hard to grind and Zirin knows that they can’t finish in one session. Such matters can’t be rushed. Azula pulls a sleep shirt on.

“See that weren’t so bad now were it?”

 

Azula doesn’t answer, opting to brush her fingers over excess fabric instead. Finally, she shakes her head no.

 

“No it weren’t so bad?”

 

Azula clarifies with a nodded yes.

 

“I tol’ you it wouldn’t be.” Zirin hopes to herself that this had earned her a heap of trust points. She believes that it has because this time Azula lets her hold her hand as they would to the bedroom.

 


	9. A Fine Job

Zirin wishes that she can get into Azula’s head, to uncover the thoughts that lay behind those distant golden eyes. Lately she has taken to running her pointer over the scars on her arms. Zirin can’t discern any emotion.

 

“They ain’t look so bad.” She notes. Azula tosses a look over her shoulder. “The scars I mean, they ain’t so bad.” She doesn’t think that the princess believes her. Lately she has been very straight forward, waking up, dressing herself, and then going to Okon to work on drilling through the wolf-bat bones. She still flinches at the drill. The sight of it alone puts the princess on edge and the sound worsens it. Zirin never knew her to be a woman of phobias.

 

This day is different. “I have’a job fer ya, Zizi. I gotta get on werkin’ on them new wings.”

 

Zirin clenches her teeth, she knows what he’s going to request of her. She knew he would from the start but has been hoping that she assumed wrong. When she was a small thing, she liked to help her father tinker with his machines. She liked to play with wheels and cogs and nuts and bolts. Mostly she had liked to create little sculptures that served no real point other than decoration or practice.

 

He is an inventor. A mechanist. She is a mechanist’s daughter.

But she isn’t by birth.

But she isn’t practiced.

 

“When ya was lil’ ya use ta be good with a drill.  Wh‘never I needed a hole, I jus han’ed it over ta ya ‘n let ya do yer thing.”

 

“She ain’t some scrappa metal, father.” Zirin sputters. “She ain’t a blocka wood. I can hurt her. I ain’t know what I’m doing.”  

 

“Ken ya buil’ a paira wings, Zizi?” He asked. “Ya know I ain’t got me much time lef…”

She has been trying to put it out of her head since Azula disappeared. It was more than enough to think about losing one person.

“Who gonna make ‘er wings if I ain’t? I need ta get ‘em done.”

 

“You ain’t gonna leave me so soon.” Zirin whispers. “You can’t go ‘n leave me so soon.”

 

“I ain’t got no choice, Zizi. Imma frail ol’ man, I been a frail ol’ man fer a long time.”

 

Her stomach knots for the state of her father and for the state she could land Azula in if she messes things up. He hands her the drill and she is so very thankful that the princess is still working on breakfast and out of earshot. She finds herself pacing, trying to ease her nerves before Azula arrives. She wishes that she had the precision, patience, and forethought to work out the intricacies of mechanical wings. The knowledge to have them working and the skill to craft them.

 

She watches Azula approach, her fear increasing with every step forward.  With Azula everything is routine and repetition. Like clockwork, she casts her shirt aside and lays down. Zirin takes a deep breath and steps forward. The princess shoots her a questioning look. “Father has to start workin’ on your wings.” She explains. “So I’m gonna do the drillin’ today.” She hopes her expression betrays nothing. Either it’s working or Azula is having less trouble masking her concern. “You trust me, right?”

 

At Azula’s nod, she can’t help but think, _good, ‘cause I don’t_.  Holding the drill in her hand she is just as scared of it as Azula probably is.

 

“I’m scared” she says as she brings the drill closer. “I’m his daughter but it ain’t run in my genes this stuff.” Maybe it isn’t the best thing to confess right now. She inserts the drill. Mercifully her father is a has given her a generous start. It takes a lot of strength to grind through the bone and Azula jerks more than usual. But, mostly healed, it doesn’t seem to bother her much. Or maybe, Zirin thinks, it is that she has simply been through much worse.

 

“Memer when I tol’ you ‘bout how I was adopted.” She isn’t sure who she is trying to distract, herself or the princess.

 

Azula shakes her head no. Zirin expected as much, but it still stings. “Well, when I was lil’ my real father and mother decided that they ain’t like me no more. I were a bit of a wil’ kid. ‘N they couldn’t handle me. One day they was buyin’ something from father—Okon, ‘n I guess I were bein’ real annoyin’ that day, askin’ if I could have this ‘n that.” She paused. “So I guess they couldn’t take it no more ‘cause they says, ‘if ya like it here so much then why ain’t you stay.’ I didn’t think they meant anythin’ by it so I kept on lookin’ ‘round the shop ‘n when I finally was done, my folks was gone.”

 

Azula blinks.

 

“It’s okay ‘cause they liked to hurt me anyway. Well Okon found me wanderin’ around cryin’ ‘n stuff. When my real parents ain’t come back he tol’ me I could stay with him, long as I helped out ‘round the shop a bit.”

 

“My mother doesn’t like me either…”

 

Zirin smiles at the sound of her voice. It is lovely to hear it again. It sounds just like she remembers it, darkly soothing like a cursed lullaby. “That’s how we met, ya know, I was yellin’ about how much I hated my ma, throwin’ a real good fit and you came up to me and said you felt the same.” Zirin paused. “But I don’t think you’re mother hates you she seemed worried when we was playin’ Kemurikage ‘n she found out it was you.”

 

Azula makes a face.

 

“I ain’t hurtin’ you am I?”

 

Azula shakes her head. Zirin is thankful to hear it. She guesses then, that Azula still doesn’t fancy discussing her mother.

 

Hours down, and she doesn’t know how much further she needs to go. So she slips the drill into the finished bone, gauging how deeply Okon had tunneled. A little more than halfway. Zirin sticks the drill back into the left wing. She does this twice more until she feels as though she has perceived the depth right. If she has, then she only has a few more turns of the drill to make. She makes them with more confidence than when she first began. “There.” She rubs Azula’s back. “I’ll jus’ get my father  to check my work.”

 

She hopes fruitlessly, that Azula will vocally answer, but she is back to only her head gestures. Her father has made great time with the wings, as she came to find. He looks at his new invention—he calls it the ticker for the noise it makes—and then at his sundial. The times seem to match up. “That late a’ready?”

 

“Yeah we been workin’ for a while, father.” Zirin replies. “I was hopin’ you could make sure I done everythin’ right.”

 

He gets up from his workbench and approaches Azula. “Ya did a fine job, Zizi. They’s nearly even.” He picks up the drill and evens the holes to his liking.

 

Azula sits up and Zirin hands her, her shirt. Without another word, she wanders back to her room.

 

“Thank you, father. For doin’ this for her.” She wants to say more. Usually she doesn’t but she isn’t sure that she’ll get her chance later, so she continues. “Thank you for bein’ my fa, when my own ain’t want me.”

 

Okon’s wrinkled face warms.  He puts his arm around her hand holds her very close, like when she was just a child. “Thank ya fer bein’ my daughter. I always wan’ed one. Didn’t think I were ever gonna get one.” For the longest time they simply stand like that. She supposes that there isn’t much else to say, that it’s best to just hang onto the feeling of the moment.

It just isn’t long enough.

But Okon needs his sleep.

 

And so she makes her way to Azula. At first she doesn’t think that the princess is going to acknowledge her. Maybe she just wants to sleep as well. So Zirin stands back up, nearly as quickly as she had sat down. “Im gonna just let you rest then.”

A hand pulls her back down. She remembers again, what a relief it is to not feel claws against her skin. “Ya know, I do wish you would jus’ say that you want me to stay, ‘stead of pullin’ me down.”

 

The princess refuses to answer the request any which way. But she does nuzzle herself against Zirin as she had in days passed. She wonders if the princess recalls having done so before. Zirin wraps her arms around her.

Still no yes or no.

But she does speak.

 

“Thank you.”

 

She doesn’t elaborate, but Zirin gets the point. “It ain’t no big deal.” She bends her head down and kisses the top of the princess’ head.


	10. Magma Mounds

She doesn’t expect to be alone in the bed when she wakes. Usually Azula waits for her before leaving the room, even if it means laying awake for a few hours. But she is gone and her side of the bed lacks lingering body heat. The princess has been gone for some time. Zirin makes her way down the hall. “Have you seen Azula anywhere?”

“Good mornin’ ta ya, Zirin.”

Zirin groans, “Mornin’, father. Have you seen Azula?” 

“Las’ I check, she were in yer room.” Okon answers. 

She swallows a lump in her throat, the only places she has ever seen Azula wander to these days are limited to the yard and the house. Perhaps the princess is in the garden. She hopes so. The air outside is fresh and fragrant, she can imagine that the princess would enjoy it. But she isn’t in the garden, not that she can see. Zirin picks her way through clusters of firelily, orange jade, and dragon pepper. It doesn’t seem as if Azula has been the garden at all. “Shit.” She mutters to herself. “Where you at, Azula?” As if that would make the princess appear. She makes her way from the backyard to the front. Still no sign of her. “M’kay, its gonna be m’kay.” She tries to tell herself. But the fear is creeping in, what if she was taken again? Oh Agni, what if had been taken. She wonders how she could have possibly let this happen.   
She goes back inside and into Okon’s workshop. “Dad, I’m goin’ to town.”

He looks up from his work and lifts a brow. “Town?” He lifts his magnifying goggles. “Fer what?”

“I ain’t find Azula ‘round the house so, I’m gonna go ‘n look in town.” It was a fight to keep her voice level. She peers over Okon’s shoulder and sees the mechanical wings. They are coming together. The craftsmanship is splendid and they look sturdy. As of now they are scaffolds, skeletal structures of something much grander. A slew of cogs, wheels, and levers that are elaborate despite only being the basic outline of a greater whole. Zirin fears horribly, that they won’t ever find their use. 

“I nee’ja ta get some parts fer me while yer out. I’m runnin’ outta screws.” 

Zirin nods, “I’ll bring ‘em back.” With any luck she’ll be bringing Azula back too, kicking and screaming if she must.

It is sill rather early in the morning and the town is relatively vacant. Most shops are still locked up tight, she supposes it’s just as well, those are a few less places that she will have to search. Her first thought is to look at the food stall where she had bought Azula a peach, maybe the princess sought out another. But the stall is deserted as the streets. 

“Have you seen my…” girlfriend is on the tip of her tongue but she still isn’t sure where she stands with Azula right now. “My friend. She’s really short, got all’a these scars on her arms ‘n neck ‘n stuff. Black hair…” she trails off again. “Well it were black at one point, but it’s shaved now.” 

The man thinks over it as he assembles in jewelry stand. “I ain’t seen anybody like that, miss. I feel like that’s the sort of person who outta stand out.”

“She does, yeah.” Zirin agrees. In the same hour she finds that nearly everyone either keeps to their own business, to preoccupied with setting up shop for the day—something she’s known since she was a girl—or hadn’t risen early enough to have run into anyone at all.   
Empty handed is the worst thing to turn up, Zirin decides. Just like the day she’d first lost Azula, she has no leads. She thinks that this time she might have less of them than the first. 

.oOo.

It was a swelteringly hot day, that day. And she could hear the chirpy buzz of cicada-crickets. Azula’s idea of a good way to spend the day was a walk to the volcano side. If they walked far enough they could see find an array of twisting towers of long solidified lava. It was where she had taken Azula for their first date; the stars were particularly beautiful in this area of the jungle. On that night it was Azula who had been reluctant to make the trek, she hated insects and low hanging branches, and travel by foot. But Zirin had managed to pull her out of her comfort zone. The princess, had never slept—on her own accord—under the stars before. And until that night, curled up next to Zirin, she had never enjoyed it. On that morning, a little under a year later, it was Azula who decided that they would be going to the magma mounds and Zirin would be tagging along. Always on top of things, the princess had packed a generous dinner—Zirin believed that might have been hand-picked, the princess had grown accepting of having to harvest things on her own surprisingly fond of doing so. Honestly, Zirin had come to believe that the princess was always content doing mundane tasks on her own but didn’t want to risk criticism for doing the tasks of a commoner. Zirin wiped some sweat from her brow, earning herself a snide jest from Azula about not being a true firebender. Azula seemed to thrive in this kind of heat in a way that she couldn’t. Zirin was thankful for the setting of the sun, however slow it was. She thought that the jungle looked at its finest under the golden hue of the retracting sun. It was when the cicadas-crickets’ hum began to slow to almost quietness. Zirin was under the impression that half of them were nocturnal and the other half were day risers. She savored the small window of quiet as some began to sleep and others just woke. Azula didn’t seem to mind the noise either way, she might have even liked it; it cleared some of the buzz in her head, she claimed. Zirin was much the opposite, the constant insect chatter drove her up the wall. She enjoyed being able to hear the other noises of the jungle; branches snapping under animal feet, leaves rustling, and various avian calls.

They finished their meal by nightfall and took to a discussion about the days the spent as Kemurikage. About Ali and her duo-tone hair and Rana and her bold side-shave. Occasionally Zirin would bring up an old inside joke and Azula would roll her eyes. Apparently, she hadn’t heard that one yet. That night she confessed that she the other girls used to talk about Azula when she was away and it wasn’t the pleasant kind of talk. Mostly they would say that they were only speaking with the princess as a means to evade being locked up again, most of them thinking her pushy and overbearing. Azula had crinkled her brows and asked why Zirin would disclose such. And Zirin replied, “cos, we ended up likin’ you in the end, even if you was bossy ‘n all that.” 

“I am not.” She folded her arms across her chest. To which Zirin only quirked a brow until the princess muttered, “fine, maybe a little.” 

She kissed the pout from Azula’s lips. Kissed her until she pushed away with a, “geez, let me breath for a second, will you?” That was another thing she had come to notice about the princess. Over the past few months she had come to relax a little. In a sense she’d lightened up. It was a thrill to know that Azula was more comfortable around her than she was with anyone else. 

Zirin gave her the second and resumed this kiss. Only moments later she was on her back. She’d been there enough to know where this was going, and only hoped that Azula, unlike her other ‘lovers’, would stay afterwards. 

She found that, Azula—for all the confidence she emitted and dominance she maintained—didn’t exactly know what she was doing. She never imagined that she would be the princess’ first time. Azula had enough of an idea to know what she wanted to do, but her execution was a little lack-luster. Zirin supposed that they would have to work on this aspect of their relationship.   
But what she lacked sensually, she more than made up for in other regards. That night Zirin found that she was unexpectedly romantic and had knack for holding Zirin close and making her feel protected, even if she didn’t particularly need it. Azula, she came to conclude, liked closeness. She was growing sleepy in the firebender’s arms, propped up against one of the lava towers. But Azula wouldn’t let her sleep, as soon as her eyelids so much as fluttered, the princess would give her an irritating jab. 

“Come on now ‘Zuels, it’s getting’ to be pas’ my bedtime.” 

“Not yet.” She mumbled, “You can sleep soon, but not yet.”

There wouldn’t be an argument. She found herself happy to have been kept awake. As it would turn out, Azula had a very specific reason for dragging her out so late and on that night in particular. She’d been to visit the village astronomer. His call for a meteor shower had been correct.   
For hours, Zirin leaned into Azula’s embrace and stared at the sky. She could feel the Azula’s hair against her back and then eventually, the firebender’s touch. Soft hands trailing up and down her spine. Azula’s touch was pleasant and relaxing especially with stars bursting overhead. It had been a long time since Zirin had felt so sublimely tranquil. Her eyelids were growing heavy. Apparently, this time it was time for sleep. Azula let her lay atop her and shut her eyes. 

That night she dreamed of screaming and a scuffle; two puma-goat with blazing red eyes locking heads. The male puma slashed at its feminine counterpart, drawing a very uncanny human yell and then unleashing a human-like grunt of its own. The fight waged on and on until both goat-puma were in bloody, gut-spilling tatters. 

She woke up alone that morning. Alone and pissed, thinking that the princess was just like everyone else. She’d gotten what she wanted so she had no reason to stay. She scowled to herself, she was a fool for bedding a high-class lady.   
But then she noticed Azula’s clothing still laying rumpled and discarded on the floor—perhaps it wasn’t animals that had been snapping the branches after all. Some feet from that she spotted the spatter. And it registered that the screaming in her dreamscape had been a familiar cry. That, that was precisely what had made it so unsettling.  
It begins to set in, the cold and dark fear. The guilt; how could she have slept through it? How?  
She stooped down to examine the crimson, there was an alarmingly sized circle of it mostly collected on the face of a rock, with a few other splotches here and there and another larger circle of blood some feet away. Whoever it was had bashed her head against the rock, maybe a few times and then left her laying for some time.

How had this person—or people?—gotten the best of Azula? She found another cloth laying discarded on the floor near the rock. Against her better judgment she gave it a small whiff. Her world spun and she tossed the cloth to the floor. They had cheated, that’s how. After than she imagined Azula fighting through a wave of hazy dizziness—apparently giving enough hassle to warrant tossing her upon a rock for good measure. 

.oOo.

She remembers crying that night, for the longest time with Okon unable to console her. She recalls searching very frantically, shoving paintings of Azula in everyone’s faces as if they didn’t already know her by name. Her princess had been gone.  
Gone and found only by chance.   
Zirin balls her fists, she can’t imagine getting lucky a second time and wonders how she managed to lose someone so precious a second time. 

Have the same people been observing them the whole time, waiting for a chance to recapture Azula? It chills her to think that she and Azula had been watched in the midst of some very venerable, sensitive moments. 

She returns home empty-handed and with the same brand of tears and fury as the first time. 

“Ya didn’t fin’ ‘er did ya, Zizi?” He doesn’t even ask about the screws she’d neglected to get. He rubs her back reassuringly. “Ya don’ know that she been taken again.” 

“Where would she go then, daddy? Where’d she go. She ain’t got nowhere to be.” She sobs into his shirt. “I ain’t able to handle losin’ her again.”

Okon rubs his brow. “Jus’ give ‘er ‘til the enda the night, kay, Zizi. If she ain’t back by then, you ken start ta worry.” 

The end of the night seems too long. Especially when sleep refuses to come easy, in fact Zirin doesn’t even try it. Instead she waits in the front most room, eyeing the door. The door, she realizes, that they never bother to lock. They’ve been fools, thinking that no one would go for the princess again. Fools to keep their door unlocked at all.

She isn’t any closer to rest when the doorknob jiggles. She sits upright, fire blazing golden-orange in her palms. She leaps to her feet, coaxing the flame higher as a hooded figure slides in. She tosses the first ball of fire. The figure evades and pulls the hood back.

Zirin first notices a tattoo. A blue dragon with scales outlined in gold curls itself around the woman’s scalp, it’s tail dipping down and around her ear. It is fierce and elegant. From its mouth spans a ray of blue fire. But that’s not what stands out; what does is the dragon’s wings. They aren’t dragon wings at all, they are wolf-bat wings.   
She may not recognize the tattoo from anywhere but she recognizes the woman whose flesh it is tattooed on. She wants to weep in joy and lash out all at once. 

Azula strolls inside, looking for all the world, like she hasn’t done anything wrong, hasn’t caused any worry or grief. She tries to walk by without a word and Zirin is beside herself. She snatches Azula at the bend of her arm. “I hate you.” Zirin yells, but it sounds more akin to, “I haychoo.” And shoves Azula who looks at her with a passive indifference. “I. Hate. You.” She accents each word with a soft punch to Azula’s chest. The princess takes each blow with a blank face. 

When her fury finally subsides she watches the Azula wander towards their room. Zirin considers shouting at her to sleep on the couch. But she doesn’t want her to leave again. She is afraid that she’ll do it anyhow. So she follows the princess. “You ain’t gonna leave, again are you?” She practically spits.

Azula cocks her head a bit. 

“It ain’t a hard question.” 

She shakes her head, yes. 

Zirin opens and closes her mouth once and then twice, as she struggles for words. At Azula was upfront. “Well, can you at least tell me when yer gonna go into town for…for a tattoo?” Zirin can’t even fathom what had possessed the princess to go get one, hadn’t she been in enough pain already?

Azula crawls under the covers having no intention of giving Zirin the answer she demands. The comfort she seeks. Doesn’t the princess know that there are people who worry for her? Doesn’t she realize that there are people who don’t want to see her hurt.


	11. Dragon Ink

Zirin is asleep when Azula wakes. Now is as good of an opportunity as ever. She has had this idea in her head for a while now but not the will nor courage to act upon it. She wonders just when her bravado had left her. Slowly, she thinks, she is reacquainting herself with it. Perhaps this is what compels her to dress herself and head for the door.

 

Dressing isn’t easy. She avoids her reflection if she can, but getting dressed requires seeing it. She gazes into the mirror. She still isn’t used to the look of herself. Somehow, she still expects to see the perfect, unblemished princess she once was with an elegant sweep of thick black hair to run a brush through. Instead she finds a slew of scar tissue. She doesn’t think that there is one place left without it. Mercifully the scarring on her face is faint, really it would only be noticed in close proximity during long conversations that left room for making more intimate observations. This doesn’t console her, not even slightly. Because she knows that they are there and she thinks they are ugly. Even if they weren’t, they are reminders.

Reminders of suffering

Reminders of dehumanization.

Reminders of a moment of weakness. Helplessness.   
Reminders that she is human. She had always wanted to be more than that.

 

The scars on her neck and arms are much more prominent, the kind she knows will earn curious stares and pitying eyes. She doesn’t want them, yet she can’t seem to look at herself without pity. She finds that she hates her checkered skin and would almost rather see it ripped from her bones. She hates it too, how she no longer has her thick silky hair. She had been in a state of insecurity when she had chopped her bangs off—this? This was infinitely worse.

 

She runs her fingers over her head. Her hair has barely grown back at all. She decides that she needs to do something. Anything to make her feel strong again. To take the edge off of an appearance that suited her so little.

And so she acts upon her idea, this little thing that has been in her mind for some time now.

 

She pulls on a simple cloak and slips out and away from the house. Very briefly she thinks of telling Zirin and Okon where she is heading, but she is Azula and Azula does what she will. She needs no permission. She thinks for a moment that after all they’ve done for her she owes them at least an explanation for her sudden disappearance, that she doesn’t particularly want to worry them. But she is already a decent few feet down the yard and doesn’t want to go back inside. Besides, she will only be gone for an hour or so.

 

She tries to recall Zirin, she knows that she knew her in a time before her capture. But her time in the cellar had virtually driven all of those memories out. A place like that has no room for kinder memories. She keeps walking, maybe if she keeps walking she will remember. Maybe if she walks to the right spot the memory will come back. Right now, remembering isn’t her goal though—it is more of a secondary mission. No, right now she has other desires. But Zirin, who has been so good to her and for no reason (as far as she knows), seems so dismayed at her lack of recollection.  All at once, she considers that she doesn’t deserve such kindness. She walks a little faster.

 

The town is just waking when she enters arrives, she sees only one or two people and not a single open shop. She frowns to herself but decides to try anyhow. She wanders nearer to the edge of the village, this time the dancing woman is absent and there are no strange wonders to marvel at. None except for the man with the rocks in his ear lobes.

It is just as well, she is looking for him.

 

He doesn’t seem to be ready for a client, he is smoking from a pipe. She needs his talents now though, so she has no qualms about interrupting. It has been so long since someone has bent to Azula’s will, she needs to make it happen. She needs to show dominance to someone. But this man, leaves her no room to do so. He is cool and compliant when she mutters, “I want one.”

 

He points to his collection of tattoos and she nods. “Normally I don’t open this early…”

 

“I can pay you extra.” She hopes that he will take a debt offer.

 

He waves the offer off, “I don’t need extra. What I do is an art, I enjoy it well.” He pauses and beckons her into the shop. “What and where?”

 

It takes her a moment to decipher that he’s asking what kind of ink she wants. Instead she mutters, “I can’t pay right now.”

 

He shrugs, “I’m no fool. I can recognize a royal. You lot have the same eyes. Very gold eyes. You’ll get me the coins.”

 

He is way too trusting. Not that she doesn’t plan to make good on her word.  He motions for her to sit and she does. “I want a dragon…”

 

“Let me guess, around the bicep.”

 

She shakes her head.

 

“You have more originality than most people.”

 

She points to her head, “here.” She pauses. “I want it to have wolf-bat wings.”

 

“An interesting choice.” He notes as he arranges his needles and inks. “Any particular color?” Azula points to the blue ink and then the gold.  “Blue scales?”

 

“Outlined in gold.” Azula adds. She watches infuse the needle with blue. It dawns on her that this will probably hurt, but she can’t imagine that it will be worse than what she has endured before. At least this will bring her some strange, exotic beauty. She thinks to request turning her scar tissue into jagged lines of lightning. But she decides that it is a job for another day. She does her best to hold still as the needle graces her head. She shudders, it brings back unsavory memories and she has to remind herself that it is okay. That she wants this, she had asked for it.

  
The artist, she notes, is a man of good work. He seems to put very much care into it. Into each detail. She realizes that this might take more than an hour or so. “In one session.” He informs her after she asks, “it will probably take the whole day.”

 

She thinks of requesting multiple sessions but doesn’t care to make the journey into town more than once, the people make her nervous, she doesn’t want recognition. She doesn’t want questions. She also wants the ink to be on in full, should Zirin vocalize any complaints.

 

Azula tries to let her mind wander as the artist does his work, but she finds that it has nowhere to go. No memories worth focusing on. Mostly her mind leads her back into that cellar and under the hog-monkey head and she doesn’t desire to stay. Everything seems to remind her of it, she tries not to think about the ink-filled needle because the reminders it brings are very potent. She tries to think of Zirin but she has few memories to fill her own head with; the ones she does have are played over and over until they are no longer special. Even so they are all relatively recent, to the point where she doesn’t think that they count.  So she makes an even more forceful attempt to recall her pleasant days before her capture. But she feels almost blocked. She wishes she can repress the memories of her capture with just as much success. But those seem to haunt her.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Her head is pulsing and stinging unpleasantly by the time she gets home. The tattooist looked at her as though she were some kind of rarity, a spectacle he’d never seen. Apparently, she was one of the first who hadn’t passed out after hours of tattoo work on her head. She had silently taken the compliment, he didn’t realize that she has already gone through the worst of it. That the tattoo is more or less a mild annoyance.

 

She is greeted by the fragrance of goldenrod and firelily and she knows that she is almost at the porch. The scents are kind to her and she has come to associate them with pleasant sensations. Azula decides that she likes firelily and goldenrod.  Quietly she pushes the door open but Zirin has been sitting their waiting for her. She believes that this is how it would have been with she and Ursa if her mother had actually cared. It doesn’t register to her that she is still wearing her hood until the first fireball whizzes past. She moves out of its path and pulls the hood away from her head.  She cannot tell if Zirin is angry or relieved. Azula concludes that it is a mixture of both. She doesn’t see the reason for her distress. Anyways, she is tired. As she moves to get around Zirin she finds herself wondering which position would be best to sleep in so that she won’t agitate her fresh ink. Her musing is cut short by a hand snaking around the bend of her arm. She fights the instinct telling her to throw a good burst of fire. Zirin doesn’t seem to take any notice of the reaction she induced, instead she mutters, “I hate you.” She didn’t expect to feel a shove, but she can’t bring herself to be bothered by it. She is so sleepy and if she does let herself feel—even slightly—she knows that she will lose herself in the most unpleasant way. So she lets Zirin repeat herself and throw a punch for each word. None of them hurt in a physical sense but Azula doesn’t want to lose the only person who could be bothered with her.

To help her.

To take care of her.

 

Even still, Azula could feel a prickle of annoyance. The need to throw back. But she walks quietly down the hall. "You ain't gonna leave, again are you?" She hears Zirin spit.

 

Azula turns and tilts her head some.

 

"It ain't a hard question."

 

It isn’t. So she answers immediately with an affirmative head nod. Azula goes where she pleases.

Azula goes there when she pleases.

She has been caged for far too long by doctors or sadists. Sometimes she believes that they are one and the same.

 

"Well, can you at least tell me when yer gonna go into town for…for a tattoo?" Zirin sputters.

 

Azula can tell her yes, that she will let her know when she is leaving. But she doesn’t like to make promises. She crawls into bed, she still savors the feeling of a soft mattress. Of blankets and pillows and warmth. Of comfort. She wants more comfort but doesn’t know how to ask for it. She doesn’t know if she should. She doesn’t think she has earned it after running off without a word, even if she had intended on coming back.

 

“Can I sleep next to you?”

 

Azula makes room. She feels safer with someone else there. Zirin makes her feel safe. She wants to ask Zirin about the relationship they used to have, but she isn’t sure that it’s worth it. She doesn’t think that they can get back there. She is tired, but these thoughts and questions keep her awake—this she is sure has always been a problem. Her mind is too loud, she thinks too much. She is glad Zirin is there, this time she is not alone in her unease. She rolls onto her side, and tries to get comfortable. This side happens to face Zirin.  She meets her eyes, they are a deep and pretty brown. A kind brown, she can see hints of sorrow in them and she is almost certain that she is the cause of it. Perhaps she’ll tell her the next time she leaves. For once she lets her mind turn off, she knows if she thinks about it she will draw back. She is still weary of touch because so far touch has only brought her pain. She thought back to the night when Zirin worked on the wolf-bat wings. She holds onto the feelings that came with laying against her. And clings tighter to the feelings brought to her when she felt a soft kiss on her head. And from there, mustered up the courage took Zirin’s hand. It felt natural, she gets a vague sense that she has done it before because the sensation is familiar.  

 

She sees Zirin’s lips curve up and then her hand is on Azula’s cheek. She hovers her pointer above the fresh tattoo and then pulls back, probably remembering that it would sting if she touched it. But Azula takes her hand and carefully guides her fingers over the new ink.

 

“It’s pretty. Suits you well, Azula.”

 

Azula is glad that she likes the tattoo after all. It makes her feel better, it makes her feel stronger. It makes her feel more like herself. Azula squeezes the hand she holds. For the first time in a while she doesn’t dream of Li and her son.

She dreams of magma mounds.  


	12. Scales

Azula still hasn’t mentioned who had stolen her away and abused her. Zirin tries to coax it out of her again. “Come on, scales, don’t you wanna see them suffer too?” 

Azula, as she does every time Zirin calls her by the new nickname, makes a face. Zirin gets a sense that she isn’t fond of the name, but she has always mildly annoyed the princess in the past and it is something she plans on continuing. Besides, the tattoo has earned her the nickname. 

Frankly, she expects Azula to agree—that her captors do deserve torment—but instead she shrugs and continues to eye Okon as he puts the final touches on the wings. Okon had much to say about the tattoo upon seeing it. Mostly the same sentiment as Zirin; “why’d ya go ‘n put yerself through more pain for?” And then a long list of things about how a lady had no need for that much ink or any at all. Zirin had adamantly disagreed with this bit. It is going to take some getting used to, but she does like the look of it on Azula. 

Azula stands and makes her way over to Okon’s work bench, only to have Zirin place a hand on her shoulder, “fa don’t like it when people watch ‘im work.”  
Azula spares her only a backwards glance and opts to breath over the man’s neck anyhow. Zirin sighs, thinking at once that the princess is the hardest task her father has ever had to deal with. But he is patient and simply holds one of the wings up for her to see.

That one is done, Zirin realizes. It looks splendid; red silk cascades like ruby water over what was once only sturdy wood and metal scaffolds. The fabric shimmers if it hits the light correctly. Zirin can no longer see the inner workings—cogs, bolts, screws, and so on—of the thing. Instead she can see a graceful gold filigree trim that outlines the wings. She hopes that Azula doesn’t mind that the gold isn’t genuine. Zirin doesn’t think that real gold would be aerodynamic anyways; Azula had shown her, in the past, a few pictures of air nomad gliders, none of them had any unnecessary flair to weigh them down. Since Okon can’t overload the wings with metal, he had embroidered an assortment of licking flames onto them instead. 

Azula brushes her fingers over the wings, wearing something of a satisfactory expression. And then she tilts her head and picks up a fold of blue silk. 

“You wanted him to use that?” Zirin questions. Azula nods. Zirin must agree that it would suit her better, but her father doesn’t know her well enough to realize that she prefers blue to red. “But this is good too?” Zirin says. Azula nods her approval again. She watches the firebender sit back down and cross one leg over the other. 

“So you really ain’t gonna tell me who took you?” Her continued silence is answer enough. “Ain’t you worried that they’re gonna come back?”  
Azula shifts in her chair and finds a particularly nifty part of her sleeve to stare at. Zirin concludes that Azula is at least slightly discomforted at the notion.

Zirin wonders how close those people are. She wonders if she has passed one of them while buying herbs or fruits. She watches Azula wander towards the bathroom to cleanse her tattoo. When she returns, Okon is holding up the second wing, he beckons her over. “Lemme see ‘ow they fit. Gimme a hand, Zizi.”

Azula slips her shirt off to reveal the jutting bones beneath. Carefully Zirin holds down two parallel buttons and slides one wing into the hollowed wolf-bat bone as he places the second. From two small holes they had drilled into the side of the bones, the buttons pop out and click into place. Okon makes some minor adjustments, tightening the silk over the metal spokes and trimming some excess fabric. “How do, they feel?” He asks. 

“Are they too heavy?” Zirin adds.

She treks about the room for a few moments. “They are comfortable.” She stops her walking in front of the widow. The filigree glints in the sunlight pouring through it. A halo of light silhouettes her. 

“It’s a tad hard to see you when you’re standin’ over there.” Zirin notes. 

Azula steps out of the sunlight. Zirin thinks that she looks otherworldly with the wings finally in place. She is a very strange, rough and rugged brand of beauty with her patchwork of scars. They come together nicely with her tattoo and wings. A set of sharply filed fingernails adds a sort of odd completeness to the look. Her eyes are a vivid gold. She is powerful and intimidating as she had been at her strongest. Zirin wishes that she could see it topped off with her winged eyeliner and bright lipstick. Even still, Azula is a sight. Zirin would love to see the look of her captor’s now. If only they could see the dragon they helped create. Azula approaches her and she runs her fingers over the wings. “They’re perfect for you.”

“Perfect.” She catches Azula whisper to herself. 

.oOo.

Azula hasn’t taken the wings off since they’d been put on nearly four hours prior. She finds that she likes them very well. She admits that she had her doubts, that she nearly declined Zirin’s idea to have them made in the first place. But they are nothing like the ones she had before. They don’t remind her of her suffering. They don’t bring new pain her nor make her feel like a beast. On the contrary she feels elegant in a bolder sort of way.

“Come on now, Scales, you gotta take ‘em off. You can’t go ‘n sleep in ‘em.” Zirin rolls her eyes. 

She has a point, but Azula isn’t ready to remove them just yet. She almost sees it as a challenge and is inclined to try to sleep with them on. “Here, let me help you.” Before Azula can protest, Zirin unlatches one of the wings and sets it to the side with extra care. She repeats with the second wing and takes to generously massaging Azula’s back. She pulls the princess onto the mattress, where she lays face down with her cheek resting against her arms. 

“Do they function?” Azula asks. 

“Father says that they’re supposed to.” Zirin replies. “He says that he went ‘n modified my design a bit. Said he based ‘em off of the gliders.” Zirin’s touch comes to the place where Azula’s skin has grown around the bone, she lightly trails her pointer over it.   
Azula tenses, it is still a rather sensitive area. But this time the feeling isn’t exactly unpleasant. It is more of a tickle than anything else. She allows Zirin to continue to explore, her fingers tracing the lines of the scars tissue on her back. To a certain degree it is soothing and she feels herself drifting off.   
She hopes to dream of the mounds again. 

.oOo.

It isn’t exactly the same as before, laying with the princess. In days before her abduction things would have been more sensual. A moment like this would have been one for when Okon wasn’t home. But those days seem far off yet. So Zirin settles for rubbing Azula’s bare back as she falls asleep.  
Zirin presses a kiss between her shoulder blades.

She just needs time, Zirin decides.   
A lot of time.


	13. Iron Drip

_They pull her wings half-out and leave her to bleed._

_They laugh at her and mock her._

_She finally had something beautiful and they have taken it again leaving her to feel as ugly and scarred as before, possibly more so. She can see herself muscle tissue spilling from the open wound. It trails out and she doesn’t dare move for fear of dislodging the wings even more. After all of the work Okon had put in. The wings themselves are cracked and broken. The delicate bones they had been so carefully placed in are torn from their sockets and she can see blood bubbling through the cracks. It is pooling around her as Li sneers at her._

_She hovers over with a barrel of something. “Go on, boy.”_

_And her son lifts the barrel and pours it over her. It smells like centuries of rot and decay. A hoof hits her in the face, it is not attached to any limb. A slush of liquefied organs fills her nostrils. Her face bunches in disgust because some of it has slipped between her lips. She gags and tries to spit it out but that only gives an opening to take in more of the stuff. Her stomach flops, the taste is absolutely putrid._

_When she looks up she sees the drill. It flashes in Li’s hand, she breathes heavily like an animal on the fringes of its demise. Li’s son is standing over her leering. He holds up his hands and motions for her Li to hold off. For a moment she dares to hope, she thinks that he is going to end her torment. Instead he throws himself upon her. Rolling in a sludge of rot, he acts upon every dirty thing he had ever said to her. But he insists that she is hideous and barely worth touching. That she is lucky he is doing it at all, because no one else would be willing. Not when she is so horrifically mutilated and deformed. Not even Li can bring herself to look, in fact she leaves the room as Azula cries out, begging her to pull her son off. He is so rough and has little care for the displaced wings. She doesn’t know how long it went on for, she had shut herself down. But Li is back now and she is eager._

_She brings the drill towards Azula. “I don’t deserve this, I really don’t.” But she thinks that maybe she does. Deep down, some dark part of her almost feels satisfaction. She doesn’t want to admit it, but after everything she’d done—to Zuko, to Mai, to TyLee, after stealing the Avatar’s life from him—she feels as though it is only right. She had gotten Lo killed._

_“You do deserve this.” Li hisses. The drill digs under her fingernail, popping it from its bed with a fleshy ripping noise. Azula flinches and yelps. It happens a second time. A third. A fourth. Ten times._

_A dragon has been declawed._

_She is woozy but she can’t seem to pass out, that would be a mercy. Her whole body aches. She yearns for release. Release that never comes, but at least Li is willing to spare her the sights. With a most wicked and curling smile, Li thrusts the drill into the princess’ left eye. As that one bleeds, the other cries. With the second attack, Azula is blind._

_So it is a surprise when Li pours something on her. She thinks that it is more sloshy meats and innards. She doesn’t know what it is until it begins to burn her. She can feel her skin blistering and melting away. She thinks it is acid until it starts to harden._

_Molten gold, she thinks._

_But Li says that it is only iron. That the princess isn’t worth gold._

_Li severs her new wings completely and fills the holes with more iron. It leaks under her skin and festers, arousing blisters and blood before it settles over her bones. It eats through part of the way and begins to harden, turning bone to iron. Azula screams louder than she has ever. It lies somewhere between a wail and a shriek. It is almost in human and grows even more so when Li drizzles some molten iron into her mouth. At first it lands only on her teeth and burns them away almost completely. It meets her tongue and she can no longer yell properly. Li pours in more and it slips down her throat._

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin hasn’t heard Azula cry out like that in a very long time. Her dreams must be particularly distressing this morning. She doesn’t know if she should wake the poor woman or if she should get up and prepare a nice comfort breakfast for when she wakes up on her own.

 

Eventually she decides that she will prepare something special for the princess after all. She makes her way to the garden and picks out a few ripe apples and pineapples. Some bananas, grapes and mangos as well. She avoids cherries, the princess had said that she is no longer fond of them and told her a rather compelling story about banishing her servants. Zirin, not the most socially graceful, had laughed. Apparently, it had been too soon for it to be looked back on and laughed at. She assumed that Azula wasn’t ever going to let that one go.

She slices the fruits and arranges them into fruity starbursts. And over the bloom made of pineapple, apple and mango wedges she sprinkles some cinnamon. She sets it on a plate and then borders her creation with grapes and bananas.

She is rather proud of her work.

 

When she gets back, she finds Azula trembling and rubbing at watery eyes. “Hey now, don’t do that.” Zirin tries hushing her. “Yer awake now so, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.” Ignoring a plentiful slew of protests, she pulls Azula into a hug and rubs her back. She can no longer see it, but the princess’ grumpy, partly-dismayed pout is burned into her mind.

She is still topless so Zirin lets go and offers to fetch her a shirt. Azula declines and reaches for the wings. She is rather adamant about wearing them again. “Well I’m glad that you like ‘em so much.” Zirin notes. It dawns on her that she is probably going to have to help the princess modify her wardrobe. Perhaps that will be the task of the day.

 

She watches Azula take a slice of pineapple in her shaky hands and slowly nibble on it.

 

“Taste good?”

 

Azula nods.

 

“I jus’ picked ‘em.”

 

She nods again.

 

“So are you going to tell me about yer dream?” Zirin asks.

 

Azula looks at her and simply takes another slice from the fruit platter. She is growing visibly calmer and Zirin assumes that this is just another, ‘don’t wanna talk about it’ thing. She supposes that if the princess ever wants to share, she will. So she grabs a bite herself and eats in silence.

 

**.oOo.**

 

The dream is still buzzing in her mind late into the afternoon. It replays itself in gory detail and she wishes she could forget it. She thinks that the dream is possibly worse than the reality she had lived. The dreams are always much more vivid and come with torments simply not survivable in the waking world.

 

She wonders if they will ever leave her. Azula just wants sleep, untroubled sleep where she doesn’t find herself back in that damn cellar. It might be too much to ask for, but she’d like to dream of pleasant things again; of glory and power and of riches and luxury. And perhaps, of love and passion. Even just one of those would be heavenly. 

She misses good dreams.

 

She finds herself a quiet spot in the garden and sits down. Faintly she misses the elaborate and extravagant palace gardens. She hugs her knees to her chest. The tattoo prickles irritatingly, reminding her that she still has to cleanse it.

 

The act of cleaning it requires little thought at this point, so her mind wanders. In most of her dreams Li, without the mask, looks hurt and tormented, almost psychotic—it is a replica of the expression the real Li had worn.

And Azula understands.

Something had snapped in the woman, probably in the same way something broke within Azula herself.

And she had caused the break.

 

As a girl, Azula heard tell of twins. Tales that if one died the other perished as well. In others the living twin wandered with only half a soul and a crippling depression. She wonders it this is what happened to Li. The souls of twins are interwound. Azula finds it hard to fathom losing even a part of her soul. Her spirit. Her life-essence.

 

And she realizes that she isn’t mad at Li.

She feels almost bad.


	14. Dark Folly

She is a fool and she knows it. Brazen and brave, but a fool.   
She is not wearing her wings.  
The path before her is very empty and disconcertingly silent. She knows that she is truly alone again. She realizes, rather abruptly, that she doesn’t like being alone. Yet, she continuously isolates herself in some way or another through an assortment of means. During her prime she was feared and fearless. Traipsing the jungle Azula is forced to admit that she is afraid. For many reasons. But there is something that stands out much bolder than all else in the noiselessness. She is afraid of being alone. The fearless, lonely princess is afraid of being alone. 

She almost wants to turn back.  
But she can’t, lest she lose her nerve. Besides, it has taken her far too much time to pinpoint her destination, she can’t fathom having wasted all of that time. So Azula does what she does best and pushes forward. 

.oOo.

Azula has left her again and without saying a word. Zirin is furious, she hadn’t expected any different being as the princess was outright about saying she would sneak away again. But it didn’t alleviate the frustration, not under current circumstances. 

She hovered about Okon’s bed, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Trips to the water pump were becoming so frequent, she thought that she was spending a good seventy percent of her day running to and from it. 

Okon lets out a wheezing cough and Zirin’s heart seizes. She wraps his hand around the cup and urges him to drink as he fights off another fit. She knows that she can’t worry about the princess right now. No, Azula is on her own for the time being. If she wants to skip out then Zirin will leave her to it. “Can I get you somethin’ to eat, father?” 

“I’m not hungry, Zizi.”

He is never hungry these days and for it he grows frailer. She grips his hands with what is probably more force than she should. “You gotta eat.” But she knows that he won’t. He is a stubborn man and it is going to catch up to him, she just knows it. She doesn’t know, however, what she will do when it does. 

.oOo.

A little under a week later, Azula knows now that she truly is a mad woman as she stands before a decaying door. The wood is old and rotting and the stone wall it is fixed within is teeming with mold and moss. The air smells stale and musty. It sends shivers down her spine, it the odor bares too much likeness to her cellar for her to be comfortable. All that is missing is the foul stench of long dead meat. She supposes that it makes sense though, that the place reeks in such a way. 

Azula is well aware that it is in her best interest to turn around, but she is also fairly certain that this is the only way to stop her nightmares. So she knocks and she waits, every second torments her, every second is a chance to bolt. But she remains, she finds it hard to imagine cowering away, it simply isn’t something she does. 

When he steps into the light she can almost pretend that he is a normal guy. A moral, sane man. She supposed that they were similar in that way. Azula knows that she has caught him off guard, he is far less intimidating when she meets him on her own accord, but his shock wears off and he is scowling. It is unsettling all over again and she can’t fathom what possessed her to do this. She can’t exactly go back now. “Where is your mother?”

He is fast, but she is more so.   
At first she thought he was going for a quick strike. Instead he pushes the door shut, but not before she can wedge her foot in the frame. With more strength than he had anticipated, she forced her way in. “Where is your mother?” She repeated. Her voice was lower than she remembered, more dangerous. If he doesn’t cooperate she is going to hurt him, she knows that she will and it frightens her. She is already slipping away from herself in a way she hasn’t in a very long time. 

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” He mutters, he can’t look her in the eyes. 

“And I didn’t want to stay in that cellar.” Azula slowly edges closer. “Take me to her.” 

He opens his mouth and she can see it on his face that he his going to refuse, so she takes him by the wrist and with her free hand she snaps his index finger back. He cries out in shock and anguish. She feels nothing. Neither delight—as she ought to—nor guilt.   
He clutches his broken finger it is already swelling.

“Kozak?” She hears a familiar rasp. “Kozak what’s going on?”

It occurs to Azula that she can kill Kozak and cut off the only care that his mother has. It would be a slow agonizing way for her to die. It would fit very well. 

“Are you showing me to her, or am I going myself?” 

He stiffens and glares at her. But he motions her forward, she can see his bad finger still good and popped out of place. 

She realizes, standing before Li, that she doesn’t know exactly what she came to do. She thinks that she wants to murder the old woman, violently tear her apart beyond recognition. She was so aged, it would be so easy to snap a few bones and bash the woman in. 

.oOo.

Most of the town’s people have heard by now and they don’t like to meet her gaze as she enters the apothecary for herbs she cannot find in her garden. Painkillers with more potency, medicines that are less modest, and teas that are richer.

It is for nothing, Zirin knows. Nothing other than making her feel like she is doing something to help. But she knows that the numbing agents only take the edge off, that the medicines have no effect, and the teas only leave a desirable taste. 

She wishes that someone would talk to her, she needs solace and reassurance. But she is so isolated. She feels her mind fraying again and she can’t afford to let that happen. So she goes somewhere that will help her forget, at least for a little while. The tavern is loud, it is just what she needs. She promises that she will only have a few. 

And more than a few drinks later she is stumbling home in the dark, just barely making it there. Bugs buzz all too loudly in heat that is too intense, even for a Fire Nation night. The alcohol leaves her thinking that her father is going to be pissed and beat her good for coming in so wasted and disoriented. He doesn’t though, instead he does something infinitely worse.

.oOo.

Sitting across from Li, she realizes that she wanted conversation, not blood. The elderly woman drums yellowing nails upon the surface of the table, she is glowering at her uninvited guest rather wickedly. Instinctively, Azula is somewhat nervous. It is irrational, she has the upper hand here, even if Kozak decided to get involved. But he keeps very careful distance, looming in the corner of the room. 

“You’re broken.” Li remarks. Azula doesn’t know if she is referring to the physical scars or the ones in her mind that brought her here. “You should be dead, you were supposed to be. Just like my sister.” Her face only grows more sinister. 

“Yes, you’re right.” Azula agrees. Only part of her means it. She doesn’t pine for someone to put her out of her misery anymore, not since she received her wings. Yet part of her, a very large part still believes that she deserved to.

“What do you want from me, princess?” The word is unpleasant coming from that mouth and in that tone. “Are you hear to kill me? String me up for slaughter in front of my son like a hippo-cow.” 

Azula gets a faint impression that this is what Li has in mind for her—complete with a brand-new outfit of hippo-cow skin. Again, Azula is hard-pressed to suppress a shudder. “That’s not what I’m here for.” She still doesn’t know what she is here for, where she wants the conversation to go.

“Then, what?” Li askes in her gravely drawl. 

“I’m not a monster.” Azula declares. “Lo wasn’t supposed to die.” Was that really what she wanted to say? Did she truly spend all that time tracking Li down and making the journey there to try to convince Li that she is actually a remotely decent person? It seems so pathetic to want to please a woman like Li, and yet that is exactly what she came to do.   
Somewhere down that miserable path she was walking, Azula decided that she still cared for Li. Li who taught her to firebend, who helped give her what made her who she was. Li who taught her about womanhood instead of mercilessly leaving her to a mess of awful surprises. Li who took care of her when her father was busy and her nannies were out.   
Li who left her scarred and damaged beyond genuine repair. 

“You are and you always were. You always will be.” Li is very firm. Her opinion isn’t going to waver, but Azula still seeks to try. “It’s a shame.” She clamps her hand around Azula’s skin. Somewhat soft, and somewhat familiar skin. Azula jerks her hand out of Li’s grasp. “The hog-monkey wings suited you so well.”

Again, Azula disputes this. “I was…sick.” That’s what Zuko had always said when referring to her psychosis. “I wouldn’t have sent her away if—”

Li hisses and covers her ears. “You would have, you would have, you would have! Demon! Beast!” She abruptly gets to her feet. “Right from the start, I knew it right from the start. I told Lo, I told her that you were a demon child.”

“That’s not true.” She was beginning to wonder though, maybe it is true. It crosses her mind briefly to let Li bind her up again and start stitching. She thinks of Okon and of Zirin—she can’t be a monster if she has love for them. Is that what that was? Azula realizes that she doesn’t really know—or maybe, remember—what love is. 

“Do you know what they did to beasts when I was a girl?” Li asks with a snarl. “They took them into the center of down, cut out their tongues, gouged out their eyes, and fed it to them so that they can eat their own meat as they had the meat of the good villagers.”

Azula thinks that Li might just be more out of touch than she. In all of her years, she had never heard of such practices taking place in the Fire Nation. She doesn’t have much time to dwell on it though because Li lunges at her. Reflexes take over, Azula can’t recall having done so, but she sees the dying flicker of a lightning bolt. 

Li is on the ground, smelling faintly of smoke. There’s a tang of burning meat in the air with a hint of copper. The woman crumpled on the floor is sorely unarmed. She doesn’t have a knife nor fire. Not even a blunt object. She is just a fragile old woman. What she does have, is a blackened hole in her chest. It blisters and gushes. 

A loud scream rings out. She thinks it could be her own for a moment, but it is much too masculine. Kozak drops to his knees, cradling his mother. He screams again, a dismal hybrid of anguish and rage. His eyes meet the princess’ own.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like that…  
Li wasn’t supposed to die…

She knows that she is wide-eyed and that it is a show of weakness that she can’t afford in front of such a formidable enemy. Yet she can’t seem to shake her own horror. So she does the only thing she can think of at the time. She makes a break for the door, leaving Kozak to his grief. 

Now Azula knows that Li is right.   
She has killed Lo and now she has killed Li.

.oOo.

“Father.” She sobs into his chest. “Father.” The word is weaved into her cries. “You gotta come back, you gotta. You can’t just go ‘n leave me all alone.” She shakes him. “You ain’t say goodbye, don’t you know you gotta say goodbye?” She can’t help but hope that he will wake up, maybe if she coaxes him…  
“You know how many drinks I had tonight, fa? I went ‘n had more then four.” He is supposed to wake up and scold her, send her to her room without a meal. He was supposed to discipline her.   
She realizes at once, that he is punishing her. She’d neglected him for a game of forgetting at the bar and so he went and died. If only she had stuck by his side. If only she was a responsible caregiver.   
A responsible daughter. 

For her folly she is alone. Alone and furious.   
That princess. That evil, selfish princess. She had a nasty habit of disappearing when Zirin truly needed her and she was sick to death of it. Her focus shifts again, back to her father’s body. She is lost, she doesn’t know what to do. “Father, please.” She whispers again. “I nee’ja to wake up fer me.”

He remains still.   
There is still some warmth lingering on his skin.


	15. The Killer And The Victim

Azula keeps as quiet as possible as she enters the house. Zirin is asleep in her father’s room, holding the man close. She might have thought it odd if her mind wasn’t so occupied. It has been three days and she can’t put it out of her mind; that ugly black burn ring, the blood spurting between Li’s lips, her haunting death rattle, and Kozak’s face as she drew it out. Her mind is splitting again as she tries to retreat as far away from herself as possible. She is a lot of things, but until now she never saw herself as a murderer. A war child, sure. Insane, she supposed. But she didn’t think she had it in her to kill someone so outright. So she tries to separate herself from the person who killed Li, they are two different people she decides. There’s the killer and the victim, she is both but only one at the same time.

 

She crawls into bed, with her mind full of unsavory thoughts and dark things. She tries to push them out. The killer thinks that it was splendid—to see that vile old woman grow stiff. The victim just wants it to go away, wishes that things could have unfolded differently. Azula clutches her head, the contradictory blend of thoughts hurt her physically.

 

She doesn’t sleep well, not like she used to.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin sees Azula slumbering, it is a very fitful sleep and she is rather delighted to know that the princess isn’t doing well. Something awful stirs inside of her.

She doesn’t remember the last time she felt like this.

No, that’s not right. She remembers it. Very, very well. The last time she felt like this, she landed herself in the very institution where she’d met Azula. And so far she was handling the emotions much the same.

 

She doesn’t realize she is doing it until she grabs Azula by what little hair has grown back and wrenches her upward. She throws the woman off of the bed and takes in the satisfying thud and surprised yelp. She is breathing heavily and she knows that she wants to hurt the princess, she wants to hurt her very badly. She watches Azula reorient herself and pull herself into a sitting position. She looks up at Zirin with an expression of confusion, hurt, and anger. This almost stops Zirin, she isn’t used to the firebender being so expressive and open. It occurs to her that, all this time, she had earned the princess’ trust after all. At the same time, it occurs to her that she no longer wants Azula’s trust if the woman couldn’t even be bothered to be there when she needed her. So it was, that she gave Azula a very swift and hard kick in the ribcage and then one in the belly for good measure. She watches the princess wince as the air leaves her lungs. She doesn’t give her much time to process it before lifting her up and slamming her against the wall.

Zirin is all fire and no control.

 

For some reason the princess doesn’t even try to strike back, she just lets Zirin slap and punch her over and over again.

 

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula is beginning to think that pain is all she will ever know. It comes at the hand of enemies and friends alike. She thinks that perhaps, it might just come from friends more often than foe. She decides that she no longer wants friends because they don’t like her anyways.

 

Zirin strikes her again, her lip splits and bleeds.

She is tired.

 

All she has to do is send one bolt of lightning in Zirin’s direction, one powerful burst of fire. There is a burning anger, a deep hatred inside of her. The kill longs for its unleashing. Longs to see Zirin bleed for each punch she was throwing.

 

But the victim wins out for once. The victim can’t bring herself to hurt Zirin, not after everything she has done for her. The victim is something of a masochist.  She wants to be hurt. Isn’t it only right, after killing another person. The killer disagrees. The victim insists.

 

Zirin is panting by the time she drops her fists and Azula is woozy and disoriented. She tries using the wall for support but even that seems to fail. Her legs are too weak to hold her up at the moment, so she lowers herself to the ground, leaning against the wall. She sees Zirin move towards her nightstand, at first she doesn’t know why she would. But then she picks up her wings. Coming back in front of Azula she yells, “you ain’t deserve ‘em!”

 

Before Azula can comprehend it—possibly before Zirin could—she snaps one of the wings in half and tosses the other. “You ain’t! You couldn’t bother to be ‘round when he died, you ain’t deserve to wear his work!”

 

Somehow it works its way into her mind that she had killed Okon too. That her absence had sparked his death. That, perhaps, if she was there, he would still be alive. She hears another clatter and sees the broken wing fall, in two pieces, to the floor before her. They were so splendid and gave her so much light and life. Now they are twisted and dead. Useless scraps of pretty metal. Ghosts of their former power and glory.

 

She thinks something else in her broke. The last piece of her.

The only piece.

The final thing that kept her together.

 

It’s just as well though, a killer’s fate isn’t supposed to be a pleasant one. Li was a killer and she met an untimely demise. But the murder of a murder is still killer and so she must meet her end too in some way or another. The only way to end the chain is to let herself die off so that Zirin doesn’t make a killer of herself.

 

Azula knows that she is already gone. Maybe not in body, but in spirit. She thinks that she had been gone the moment she’d awoke in that cellar. She thinks that it was cruel that she had woken up there at all. And even crueler that she had been rescued from it.

No matter, she is gone now.


	16. Fight Or Flight

Azula hasn’t moved from that spot in days and the regret is finally seeping in. She tries to apologize, tries to explain that, that was the reason she had been locked away in the first place. That she didn’t mean it and that she wants to be better. But is Azula is quieter than ever. She thinks that this time, truly, no one is home. Azula’s eyes are so vacant and glazed over, they only hold the smallest flicker of life. But even that isn’t so bright.

She looks at the broken wings and wants to weep. Okon had worked so hard on them and she destroyed them in a fit of rage, they lie discarded on the floor.

She can’t handle it, she doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t have Okon to get advice from.

 

She tries to take Azula’s hand but the princess quite literally hisses and pulls away from her. So instead she scoops the wings up, it doesn’t seem right to just leave them lying there. It doesn’t seem right to just leave Azula laying there either but she doesn’t dare touch the princess. She’d done it one too many times and in the worst way.

 

She stands by for a moment, just observing Azula. Azula who is zoned out again and drumming her long fingernails on the floor. It is a phantom of a motion, something she does without any thought, and perhaps without even acknowledging that she is doing it at all.

 

Zirin can’t stare any longer; Azula doesn’t look right. She just doesn’t, she has never seen Azula look so shattered. She can’t stand seeing the outcome of her rage, what she has reduced Azula to. She doesn’t know how to process having lost control again.

 

She flees from the room with incredible haste and hates herself twice over for not having the courage nor decency to muscle through it and try to make things right. But she is ashamed. Ashamed and afraid that if Azula says the wrong thing she will fly into another rage. Just as much, she fears that Azula will find it in her to strike back.

 

She is by her father again, the corpse collector won’t be around for another few days, so she is stuck with a morbid impression of the man she loved the most. But he is all she has right now so she takes his icy hand and asks for the thousandth time that week, “daddy what do I do?”  And when he doesn’t reply she mutters, “ya oughta send me back, I need to go back to that place.” In a way she is glad that he isn’t here, she can’t imagine telling him what she’d done. He would look at her like she was some kind of beast, like he had the first time she’d been institutionalized. She never wants to see that expression on his face again.

She knows that she won’t.

Yet she knows that she should.

 

She nuzzles her head against his stiff chest as the tears start to roll. Usually he would stroke her hair and whisper, “it’ll be ‘kay, Zizi.” And he would offer to cook her up one of her favorite dishes or to walk with her to the lake. But he is so still. She nuzzles closer, he is beginning to wear the perfumes of a dead man but Zirin can’t bring herself to care. In death he is still all she has.

 

So she breaks down in front of him again. This time he doesn’t wake up to calm her down. She is throwing things. Careful to only take her own possessions and not break anything else that her father once loved.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula doesn’t like the crashing and banging. It reminds her of the times her father worked himself into a rage. The times where she slipped into one of the palaces secret rooms and waited for the storm to pass, fearing that he would find her.

 

Azula doesn’t like Zirin, she decides. The woman is like her father.

Azula doesn’t like her father.

She doesn’t like her mother nor brother.

She doesn’t like Li nor her son.

She doesn’t like anything really.

She hates herself the most.

 

The scars she’d earned in the cellar are especially ugly now, any beauty she once saw in them was certainly an illusion. A pleasant, blissful one, but an illusion no less. The bones jutting from her back seem extra sickly and she knows that she can’t remove them, they have been there for too long, just like the vileness in her soul.

She knows now that Li truly was successful in making her into a monster.

 

 

Even though she—the killer—has decided that hates everyone, she—the victim—doesn’t want to be alone. But she doesn’t want to find herself met with a barrage of flying objects, she is in enough pain. She presses her hands over her ears and pretends not to hear it. But this leaves her alone with her thoughts, the ones that remind her that she is awful and unwanted. The ones that remind her that it is better that she is alone so she can’t destroy anyone else save for herself. The ones that tell her that she earned the beating Zirin had given her.  

 

It is too late to go back now. The thoughts are there and even Zirin’s anguished cries aren’t enough to drown them out. Her mind turns over and over again until it finds a solution, one that seems rather befitting. One that seems dismally poetic.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin is so scared to go back to the princess’ room. She is afraid that she may find Azula drowned in crimson that weeps from scars she reopened. She knows she won’t be able to shoulder the blame of another death. She is just as afraid that if she approaches a very much awake princess, that she will push her to hurt herself.

 

Finally, she musters up the strength to face Azula again. The woman is still where she had been last. It dawns on Zirin that she must be famished and thirsty. To her surprise the princess takes the glass that she offers and drinks it with a sense of greed. But Zirin knows that she is going to have to force the princess to eat and refuses to try. She can’t see the Azula taking well to that. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. Nothing until she forces an, “I’m sorry, I really I am. I didn’t mean any of it.” Despite the sincerity of it, it seems so empty. So inadequate. A better gesture would be to ice the bruises she’d created, to bandage the cuts, to apply aloe as she had done with her Okon. But if she so much as gets within a foot of Azula, the princess flinches back.

 

“Can I…can I clean that.” She points to one of the larger gashes on Azula’s temple. “I wanna fix things, I don’ know how but I wanna. I really need someone to talk to.” She wants help just as much as she wanted to give it.  She needs to talk about her father and how it is—and has been—destroying her, about the unchecked anger that always seems to churn within. More than that she feels obligated to tell Azula why she had snapped. That it wasn’t the firebender’s fault, not entirely. “You jus’ left at the wrong time.” She tries. It is an attempt as pathetic as the person who’d made it. And it is for nothing, Azula is already distant again. Her words aren’t being heard. She might as well be sitting alone in the room. She might as well be talking to another corpse that she created.

 

She can sense it. She can see it in Azula’s dead eyes that the princess is going to run—mentally she already has. Where to, Zirin isn’t sure. But she is worried, she thinks that the princess will hurt herself. She knows that it will be on her if she does. She longs to keep Azula from leaving, the impulse is strong. But it seems just as detrimental to hold her captive. Frankly, she thinks that it would be more detrimental; it would throw her right back into one of her darkest moments. It would put her back in a place where she can only be the victim and that isn’t the Azula she knows. This woman curled up before her also isn’t the Azula she knows.

 

“Please fight.” Zirin whispers. Even if that meant fighting her, she wants Azula to fight. But she will pick flight and when she does, there will be nothing Zirin can do. The princess will be out of her hands.

They will be left to their own devices.

To their own personal destructions.

 

“Please don’t leave me.” Zirin tries one last time. She knows that she has no right to ask, not after losing control like she did. “I ain’t want you to have to be alone anymore. I ain’t want to be alone.” She can’t imagine being isolated in the house with only her father’s body for company. “Don’t leave.”

 

She knows very well that Azula does what Azula wants. And Azula had made it abundantly clear, so long ago, that she would leave again.


	17. History In Retrograde

The corpse collectors come on a smoldering sunny day. Just on time too, because the body is starting to smell. Rot fills the house and raises bile to Zirin’s throat. Still she has trouble turning her father over to them. “You can’t take ‘im not yet.” She insists. But the lead corpse collector shakes her head and helps her partner hoist Okon into the cart.

 

“My condolences, sincere condolences.” The woman apologizes. “But he can’t stay there.”

 

“We’ll take care of him until the funeral has been prepped.” The man vows.

 

Despite the well intentions, they have done little to console her. Zirin isn’t sure that she can stomach attending a funeral. Part of her is still convinced that he is going to wake up and scold her for getting wasted. That part of her churns uncomfortably at the notion of putting him in the dirt. She has no one to voice this to. And no one to confide in as she watches the cart roll away down the gravel road where it is eventually swallowed up by the heat mirage.  She closes the door quickly, feeling empty within. She can hear ever creak in the house, every draft against the rafters. And when she can’t, it is far too silent.

 

She goes to her bedroom, where she had last seen Azula but no matter how many times she checks, the princess still isn’t in it. She can’t be sure of when she had left, but she just knows that her absence has a very tangible feel to it. The same feeling has haunted her for days now.

Yet she doesn’t have the willpower to seek the princess out again—she is probably long gone anyhow. Perhaps if she is lucky—which she hasn’t been in ages now—Azula will make her own way home.

 

In the meantime she fantasizes and in her fantasies, Azula comes back with very heartfelt apologies and armfuls of flowers. Sometimes the flowers are swapped out for gold or fine silks. But each time the princess is tearful and remorseful, pleading almost. It is a gross re-write of her entire character and Zirin feels bad for having conjured up such a version at all.

 

**.oOo.**

 

She hasn’t eaten in days, it is hard to do so when her appetite is so lost. Zirin begins to think that the princess was her source of energy and sustainability. She is growing obsessed and she thinks that Azula is lucky to have disappeared, lest she fall victim to a stalker.

There is something so broken inside of her, Zirin decides to herself. She doesn’t know how to fight it.

 

She steps out into a her garden...

Okon’s garden.

It was something that used to bring her peace of mind and time to flush out the negativity. But that was when it had been teeming with life. She hasn’t tended to it in a very long time—she couldn’t do so without thinking of the man she planted it with in the first place and without thinking of the nights she spent there with Azula.

 

Its grasses are dry now and make rough crackling noises when stepped upon. Petals are shriveled with dull colors, the remanence of former vibrancy. Fruits have dropped from sickly branches they are too heavy for. They have the smell of decay and fester with maggots. Some of them weep a blackish slosh, that has a tang of sweetness amid the fouler over-scent. The only life lurking in her sorry excuse for a garden are the flies that form clouds around the dead fruit.

 

Zirin knows that the house is no longer hers.

 

**.oOo.**

 

The jungle isn’t kind to her, it has offered her an assortment of bites she can’t identify. Some itch and some rash. Some are just there, nasty raised dots on her skin. It is much too hot. Zirin doesn’t remember this jungle being so harsh.

 

She had planned on finding herself a new place, somewhere deep in the jungle far from her old life. Now her goal is to get to the magma mounds and pitch herself upon one of the rocks. She fears that she won’t make it to the kinder parts of the spirit world with Okon, but it is worth a try.

 

It rained the night before and the jungle is still weeping, drops fall from fronds in random intervals or whenever the breeze ghosts by. A light fog clings to the ground clawing at Zirin’s ankles as it goes its way. Bird calls are scares this deep in the jungle and the ones she hears are lonely laments. Overall it is a gloomy sort of day. Not that she can tell the difference between an overcast day and a bright one. Still, she doesn’t remember the jungle being this somber and foreboding. Maybe it knows that she is on her death march.

 

She can see the mounds now; mesmerizing, bleak, earthy spires that twist and curl before her. They only grow bigger and more oppressive as she draws nearer. This was where the darkness began. She can still see Azula’s blood where it had been collected on one of the rocks. She would have a similar pool soon.

 

She takes in a deep breath and contemplates how to go about doing this.  How is she going to climb up one of them and which one? She’s going to have to find a mound that towers over another but spaced out in rather close proximity. She tries to push out thoughts of failure and survival. She can’t afford that right now. She thinks about the best way to succeed. Rather she tries to, it is hard to think when one finds that they are no longer alone.

That that hadn’t been alone to begin with.

 

At first she doesn’t hear the muffled sob. It is so sort that it might as well not have been there at all. Maybe the ghost of someone who had the same idea as Zirin. But the sound comes again, it is a very human sound.

It grips at Zirin in a suffocating, way that she can’t quite fathom.

It is lonely. It is tormented.

Haunting.

Somehow graceful and beautiful as it is melancholy.

 

It almost coaxes her to go ahead and make the leap. It is so terribly overwhelming and heart-wrenching and Zirin still can’t place why. Not until she turns to the source. She thinks that deep in her broken soul and aching bones, she knew exactly what she was hearing.

Who she was hearing.

 

Azula is a very unmistakable presence, no matter how timid she is in body.         

 

Strangely, as Zirin observes her, in body, she is both timid and fierce all at once. She is strong and weak in a single moment. The tormenter and the tormented inhibiting the same form. But above all she is a rather disturbing sight to behold.

In her shaking hands she holds a needle and a pelt. 

 

Fresh blood accents her left arm. Zirin can’t tell whose it is. She has a gleam in her eyes, an awful gleam. She meets Zirin’s eyes as she fixes the pelt over her arm, just above the first one. Her face twitches in pain as the needle pricks her arm.


	18. Beast Brain

It is a quiet night when Azula slips away again. She knows exactly what she is going to do, she knows exactly how. She carefully makes her way down the hall with all of the stealth she is known for. She slips past Zirin and steals into Okon’s workroom. She almost feels bad for taking what belongs to him, especially after leaving him when he could have used another person. It was a selfish move and she is about to make another. She could stay for his funeral and pay her respects. But she has other, grimmer matters to attend. She tells herself that Zirin wouldn’t want her there anyways, the dull aching bruises make convincing herself that much easier.

Really, she should say a few words now, but she can’t, not with Zirin slumbering so close to him. It is disorienting to see him in the early stages of decay. He looks older than she last remembered him. She thinks that if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he’s been dead for months.

 

The night air is colder than she expects when she finally finds it in her to open the door. She ought to bundle herself up some, but decides that she doesn’t deserve warmth.

 

The garden is almost a phantom. It holds so much beauty but it probably shouldn’t. She wishes it didn’t, it mocks her the way it is.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula knows that she should be in uncomfortable in the sweltering heat. Knows that she should be irritated by the insects getting bloated on her blood. But she isn’t, by now pain is almost a second natural state of being. She no longer feels it. But she can still feel in her twisted, broken mind. And the jungle leaves her with plenty of time to remind her of exactly why she needed to take to it. Okon’s house doesn’t belong to her. Really, she has no right to be there at all. So she isn’t. She, in fact, doesn’t deserve a home at all. She doesn’t deserve companionship. She doesn’t deserve love nor care nor compassion. She doesn’t even deserve pity.

 

She has an incredible ability to damage and destroy people, even when she is trying to make amends. Even when she truly cares for them. She doesn’t want to make amends with Zirin, not when there’s a chance that she will send currents dancing through her bones. That is what Azula is good for, charring people.

 

She looks at the mural of scars Zirin and Okon had so carefully tended to. They seem somehow more prominent.  They mar her skin in a way that shows her for what she is. They are blueprints. Blueprints that she knows she needs to follow.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Days have gone by and she hasn’t seen any animals worth hunting. No wonder Li was always gone for so long. She sees squirrel-toads and rabaroos but those are too small for her task, so she lets them carry on with whatever jungle critter do. She sits quietly waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Longing.

She needs an animal to come by.

 

Nothing worth hunting does. It seems that the world can’t even make self-destruction easy for her. On a better day she might have taken this as a sign that she is not meant to ruin herself, that she is meant for better things. But today, she is hellbent on making sure that she sees all of the pain she decided she deserved.

She has lied for so long, that’s what she has been told anyhow. It is time to tell the truth. It is time to show herself for what she is.

 

She sits for three days, occasionally taking a drink from a waterskin running low on supply. She doesn’t bother feeding herself. It takes four days for a tiger-monkey to emerge. It chirps playfully at her and then screeches horrifically when she sends a lightning bolt at it. Faintly she wonders if making a companion of it could have saved a part of her misshapen soul. She ponders it as she guts her would-be companion.

 

She is elbows deep in blood and gore. A look that probably suits her. She is a killer and she has done it again. She will keep doing it, probably. Unless she can render herself unable. She might just do that, but first she has matters to attend.

 

**.oOo.**

She doesn’t recall having done so, in fact most of her time is spent in a daze—some kind of last resort protective barrier crafted by a decaying brain. But there she is, standing in the magma mounds. They loom over her impressively and oppressively. They urge her to get on with it, to stop being a sorry, frightened, bitch and get started already. She runs her fingers over those hideous scars, somehow they look more raised than ever as though they themselves are itching to aid her in her duty.

She knows, just as well, what she is about to do and she is terrified. Terrified and righteous at the same time. She is about to do the world a service. She is about to avenge Li for herself. Her hands are still red from skinning the tiger-monkey and they slip on the needle a few times. She admits that some of it is on purpose, she is still apprehensive as anyone might be.

And so she cries out. Because she is conflicted. Because she needs to do this.

But also she is still a human, at least a small part of her is. That small part doesn’t want to be snuffed out. That small part cries to remain human.

Yet she knows that, that part of her is just an illusion.

Still, she wants to believe that it isn’t.

 

She lets the more primal part of herself have control. Soon the killer will strike and silence the victim.

 

A great many things swirl in her mind as she brings the needle to her skin. She thinks first of Zuko and how he would love to be here, front row to see her display. If anyone has earned free tickets, it is he. And she thinks of Zirin who deserves better. Zirin who has mixed herself up with the most horrible sort of demon. In time she will be free. Part of Azula thinks that she shouldn’t do this to herself, that she can’t truly be as awful as she believes.

Her tears are silent.

Through them, her sight gets blurred. And for a second, her hands become Li’s. Wrinkled and veiny. She is Li, angry and vengeful. But she is Azula too, hurt and confused.

 

Her lips part and she whimpers to herself. She hasn’t even placed the pelt on and she is already in distress. For a good while she simply cries to herself, rocking back and forth against one of the mounds as she tries to work out what to do. A figure appears, kicking aside lazy streams of fog. Azula hardly notices it and it hardly notices her. Maybe it is for the better. She watches the figure inspect each and every mound with a dismal sort of passion. She is still in a state of dismay herself so she chokes out another cry. Drawn out and tormented.

Self-inflicted.

 

This has drawn the attention of the figure it stands before her both pitying her and fearing her. And Azula realizes that, though she weeps, her mouth is twisted in a feral snarl. She recognizes the face that observes her.

The face coaxes her to act.

 

She stares Zirin in the eyes as she adjusts the pelt to fit along the scar line. She is shaking so terribly. Yet somehow, as her stomach churns and leaps with anxiety, it bubbles with anger and excitement. She works the needle beneath skin so delicate.

 

And it hurts so terribly. A white-hot thing it is to reopen a wound. But she keeps going until she is screaming a hole in her throat. Until she is pleading with herself for mercy. But she doesn’t relent. She pushes the needle through again and again.

 

The tortured hand is her own. The one holding the needle is Li’s.

 

She shrieks again, the tears fall fast as she makes the final knot. She can hardly see what she is doing. But it is done, the pelt is fixed in place. So she lifts the next, wailing and laughing in the same breath.

 

A hand closes around Li’s wrist. It holds tight. And Azula screeches to be unhanded. But right now Zirin has more energy. She hasn’t lost as much blood, she has probably eaten more, has had more rest. She is on top of the princess straddling her as she shouts. Her feet kick uselessly at the ground as she tries to free herself. She has to finish her job, she has to.

 

She is still cackling.

She is still sobbing.

 

Zirin is still the perfect embodiment of fearful. The poor thing has probably never seen anything so bizarre. And it makes Azula laugh and cry harder.

 

“Please stop it.” Zirin begs. “I ain’t want you to do this. I ain’t mean for this to happen.” A second set of tears are on Azula’s cheeks. But these have fallen from Zirin’s lashes and landed upon her face. “I ain’t want you to hurt yourself.”

 

She tries with all of her might to break free and continue stitching. But her head is growing fuzzy. She is growing weak. The fuzz in her head is something that she can feel in her arms and legs. And the physical world falls away from her.

Or she falls away from it.


	19. Because She Knows

It is hard to carry Azula through the jungle. She is easy to lift at first, but the longer she stays in Zirin’s arms, the heavier she seems to grow. It is even harder when she has to awkwardly extend her arm to shove plumes of vines and overgrown fern leaves to the side as she passes. She has trouble watching her step, stumbling constantly, she almost drops the princess on numerous occasions. Her stomach rumbles and aches and is drenched in sweat form the exertion. She hopes that the princess will wake up and walk for herself. But then she takes it back, knowing that Azula will fight her the whole way should she do so. No less, she is in dire need of a break, so when she comes to a nearby stream she halts sets the Azula down. With a degree of greed, she laps at the water in her cupped hands. She takes a second handful and helps the princess to drink it.

She resumes her commute home, wishing with all of her soul that she hadn’t upset the woman so much in the first place. She wonders why she always snaps like that. She wonders if she even it is even possible to make things right. How can she? She doesn’t know one person who has gotten away with manhandling the princess the way she had. Perhaps that she has gotten away with it thus far, is a reason to hope.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin carefully clips away at the pelts, one pelt at a time. But no matter how cautious she is, she is no Okon, she ends up nicking or cutting Azula’s rather delicate skin. It doesn’t help that the princess is screaming and hollering at her the whole time.

Mostly she can’t understand, the princess is intangible. She is moving the conversation in all sorts of directions and at a rate much too fast for Zirin to follow.

 

So she doesn’t even try to reply, she just keeps snipping.

 

“No!” The princess screams again. “You can’t, I need them there!”

 

Zirin is glad she has Azula bound. She is glad until she sees just how desperately the firebender is fighting against her restraints. They cut into her wrists drawing blood and coaxing raw rashes. Every time she wipes the blood away it bubbles back up between the part in the straps and Azula’s wrists. But she can’t have the princess squirming around any more then she already is. She has decided that she is going to help Azula whether she wants it or not. She has to fix this. She has caused it so she just has to.

She doesn’t know what she will do if she can’t.

 

“Why?” Zirin finally asks. “Why do you need them?”

 

Azula’s lip curls up, “so everyone will know…”

 

“Know what.” Zirin asks, Azula is holding still now. She has to keep her talking. She cuts another thread.

 

“What I am.” She practically hisses.

 

The words strike her in the most unpleasant way and she takes in a deep breath. “What? A monster? Is that really what you think?” It hurts especially because she has a feeling that she helped lead the princess to that conclusion. But there is something more. “Why do you think that?”

 

“I killed her.”

 

She fights to keep her grip on the scissors. “Who?”

 

“Li.” Azula smiles. She laughs.

But she is crying too.

 

Zirin is afraid, she has never seen Azula so far over the edge. As awful as she sounds to herself, she has never seen anyone behave as Azula is now and it is terrifying. Indeed the princess is in a precarious state and she doesn’t know how to bring the woman back from it. That doesn’t stop her from trying. She pushes Azula’s bangs out of her face and tries to meet her frenzied eyes. “If you’re a monster, then I am too.”

 

Azula nods in agreement. It was the last thing Zirin wanted. “We’re both awful, we both need too…” She trails off and Zirin can see an idea forming in her head. No doubt a horrible one. The wheels are turning behind her eyes and when the idea is fully crafted, they light up, “I can sew one onto you.”

 

“No.” Zirin declines. “No. I’m a human bein’ and you are too.” But part of her, something buried so deep within pressures her to take Azula up on her dreadful offer. Instead she kisses Azula’s forehead and whispers, “you’re not a monster.”

 

It was a mistake, Azula is shrieking at her as though she just pressed a hot iron to her forehead. Something, something about how Zirin should just let her rot in hell as she deserves. And another something or two about how Zirin deserves the same fate. She wishes she had the spices and herbs in her garden to whip up a sleep inducer. She thinks to just hit her over the head, but that feels wrong for many reasons. So she carries on with her task to the best of her ability like a small town shaman preforming an exorcism.

Azula eventually wears herself out anyways.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula doesn’t recall much of it. She thinks that she might have been out for a few days. If the lack of pain is anything to go by, it would make sense. It only hurts if she lays on it the wrong way, or stretches the skin unexpectedly. Other than that, her skin only tingles. Save for a particularly deep gash on her forearm. That stings and burns rather intensely.

 

She is hot and clammy and, as she wakes up, she realizes that her head hurts. She feels feverish. She tries to recollect anything. As she comes further to, she notices that she is bound at the wrists and ankles and the dread sets in. She will hear that raspy voice at any moment. But how can it be? The woman is dead. It only registers that she can see a generous amount of sunlight after she screams. She is not in a cellar, as she thinks she ought to be, but rather on a bed. A decently comfy and very familiar bed. Zirin enters the room.

And she doesn’t understand.

Because her memories are so fuzzy.

 

“If I let you go are you gonna attack me.” Zirin asks.

 

Slowly bits and pieces come together. She had gone to visit Li, it went exactly as she _didn’t_ plan, she came home, and Zirin give her an ass kicking she felt too guilty and shell shocked to fend off. She doesn’t know how to answer Zirin. Because almost every bit of her desires to punch back. But the other parts are still present and they want to be loved and forgiven.  “No.” She finally answers, because she very much hates Zirin for reaping her of what remained of her dignity. She has every intention of attacking Zirin, but vocalizing it won’t earn her, her freedom.

 

“Promise?”

 

Azula nods. She knows her reputation and her track record. She has murdered and maimed, what did just one more lie matter, anyways?

 

Zirin unbinds her.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Her lip is still dreadfully swollen it has only just stopped bleeding. Azula is a relentless force. At first, she had tried to throw the princess off of her but she fast learned that she was overpowered, and fast remembered that Azula had so generously let her beat her senseless. She thinks that she truly must have knocked her senseless, because the woman was undoubtably out of her mind.

 

Dabbing at the split in her lip she wonders about the nature of their relationship, questions its salvageability. It isn’t healthy, is it? Maybe it had been but she thinks now, that they are poisonous to each other.

 

It makes her so angry to know that none of this would have happened if she hadn’t roused Azula from her sleep for a surprise impulse ass kicking. The very kind that had her biological parents dumping her off and leaving. She wonders what had hurt Azula more, the kicks and punches or the accusations. She thinks again that the firebender wouldn’t be so insistent on being a monster if she hadn’t put the idea back in her head. And that is why she can’t be furious at the princess even though the split still hasn’t scabbed over. Even though it still stings.

She is just as guilty. Just as toxic as Azula.

She has finally found someone who will throw back what she gives.

 

She wants to do different this time. She wants to fix things. She finds the wings laying discarded on her father’s workbench collecting dust. They aren’t as shiny as before, in fact they look very dull. The room has a woody smell of abandonment and neglect. Of rotting parchment and solidifying ink. Zirin carefully picks up the wings and holds them to her chest. They are still, in the most muted sense, beautiful even when they are in parts.

 

**.oOo.**

 

It didn’t make her feel better, not even slightly. Perhaps her pride felt at ease knowing she’d got the last physical hit. But her guilt is reaching its peak and she doesn’t know how much more she can handle. She isn’t used to it; she misses the days when she could act without care or mercy. When her conscience didn’t bother her so.

 

Zirin hasn’t entered the room in days, she wonders if she had forced the woman out of her own house? She is so alone and she feels so sickly. She heaves herself up on arms that don’t seem to want to support her. She is dreadfully dizzy and her stomach lolls extraordinarily unpleasantly. Her head still hurts just as incessantly as it had when she’d first awakened. And she is torn between wanting Zirin’s tender touches and wanting to hold on to her anger.

Her anger is all she has.

The only thing that keeps her from falling back into another fit.

 

She holds her arm out in front of her. It is notably swollen but she doesn’t have the energy to get up. Her head pounds and she feels like she is on fire, like she is burning up from within. It scares her because heat has always been a source of comfort. But not this kind.

She doesn’t know which torment is worse, her guilt or the physical.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin is afraid to enter the room, she stood at the door for what may have been a half an hour. She touches her fingers to her lip, the scab is prominent and waiting to be re-opened by a vicious princess. Finally, she pushes the door open. She sets out the most embarrassing excuse for a meal, a simple loaf of bread she’d bought from town. Her finances are running out, soon she won’t be able to afford even that.

 

Azula doesn’t acknowledge her. She takes the food but she stares right through Zirin. This is one of the things she had been afraid of. She fears pushing for attention just as much as she fears being snubbed. She knows Azula well enough to know that her pride has been terribly wounded and that, that is grounds for a grudge.

 

Azula shoves an empty plate at her. No, it wasn’t a shove. She had thrown it. It shatters on the floor at Zirin’s feet. The princess scowls. Zirin fears that Azula has come to a nasty conclusion; that if everyone thinks she’s a monster she should start behaving like one. That’s why Zirin mutters, “you ain’t a monster.” She wants to take Azula by the arm and stroke those scars. Wants to remind the princess that she doesn’t wear the skin of a beast, but rather the skin of a warrior.

A fighter.

 

Yet Azula refuses to let her get near her. She thinks that she should give Azula some distance. Some more time to think and hope and pray that the princess would use that distance well.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Something stirs in the deeper, darker recesses of Azula’s mind.

She doesn’t know what it is.

She wants it gone.

 

She cups her hands over her ears and screams. She can picture Zirin jolting upright. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care and Zirin doesn’t come to check on her. And suddenly she does care. She wants Zirin to come groveling caringly back so she can shoo her away again. So she could toy with her some more. So she can help the string the woman up on another guilt trip so she can fester in the emotion just as Azula is.

She also wants Zirin to come groveling in such a meek and pathetic way that she has to forgive her.

 

What is wrong with her? Again, she wishes that she had never made it out of the cellar at all. In spirit and mind, she had met her end down there. Azula never did make it out. Only fragments of her.

 

She lays back down and curls herself up. Chills wrack her prone body, yet she still sweats. She is afraid to look at her arm because she knows what she will find. The gash is no more healed than it was a few days ago, the soft pink has deepened into a concerning red ring. It is swollen beyond anything she has ever seen. Where it doesn’t weep she can a yellowy-brown crust.

It ails her pretty decently, but it is nothing compared to what she has been through prior. She is under the impression that she would be bawling at the constant jabbing sensation had she never been held captive. But she had been, she had been an abductee for so long. She believes that, that is why it is easier for her to sleep through the pain.

 

Still the sight of it makes her queasy, it makes her stomach lurch more than it already had been so she fetches a towel and wraps it around the gash.

Buried under the cloth she can forget about it.

 

Faintly she wonders why she had allowed it to get so bad when she was free to go into town for treatment. She wants to make the trip but she knows what they will do. It is unsalvageable. Surely, they’ll take her arm.

She buries her face in the pillow and gives another muffled sob.

 

**.oOo.**

 

She let another few days pass before approaching Azula again. In nights prior she had waited for the noise to die down before slipping into the room and setting out some more bread and water. This morning she waits for the noise to start. This morning, when she hears Azula stir she is in the room with something better. She had made a special trip to town and nabbed some vegetables when she was sure the merchant had his back turned. For her mis-deed she has a warm bowl of soup for the princess. Agni, does she look like she’s in dire need of it. Her skin has a sickly pallor and in places some odd discoloration. Her eyes are tired and red. Her hair, which has grown to a little below her ears, is knotted and bedraggled. She looks like hell, maybe worse.

 

Zirin doesn’t know how to break the ice, but she better speak while Azula is eyeing her, however vehemently unhappy the glare is. She takes a deep breath and looks towards the top right corner of the room. “I ain’t mean none of that.” She states, hoping the Azula will catch what she was referring to. “I ain’t mean it and that’s why I went and tried fixin’ ‘em.” She holds the wings out to the princess. “So you can wear ‘em again ‘cause father woulda wanted that.” She steals a glimpse at Azula. “I want that.”

 

She expects Azula to snarl and accuse her of lying or to outright refuse the apology. She looks back at the ceiling and when she turns her attention back to the princess, Zirin can see that she is biting her cheek. Her eyes are a little misty as her fingers touch the wings.

 

“Go on.” Zirin urges. “I know they ain’t as good as before but they’re the best I can do.”

 

Azula takes the wings and Zirin notices the makeshift bandage for the first time. But she doesn’t get a good look at it before her arm slides back under the covers. “Need me to put ‘em on you?” Zirin offers. But Azula clutches them protectively. “Alright, maybe some other time?”

 

 

 

**.oOo.**

 

She is still so angry.

Angry?

No. Hurt.

She has been confusing the two all along.

And it takes Zirin giving the wings back and telling her that she deserves them to realize it. She holds them close to herself but with little force, she doesn’t want them broken again. She inspects them; the craftsmanship in the broken area isn’t as sturdy as before. There are places where the design is not symmetrical, in part this was done on purpose, it is very clearly Zirin’s style.

 

She tentatively runs her fingers over them.

They are hers.

She smiles her last smile she ever would.

 

**.oOo.**

 

She knows that Azula is regaining control because she is back to being very quiet again. Regardless, she can’t help but worry that the princess is still ignoring her. “Why won’t you talk to me?” She asks.

 

“People only get hurt when I talk.” Azula replies. She sounds so tired and weak. “Li did.”

 

“What do you mean?” Zirin pries, but the princess falls mute again. She was lucky to even have one answer.

 

She notices that Azula is shaking and sweating. It has been a few days since she had given Azula the wings back and it seems that as each one passes Azula grows frailer. Thinner. The princess doesn’t eat much and when she does she can’t seem to keep it down. Zirin presses a hand to her forhead. “You’re burnin’ up and it ain’t normal, I don’t care if you’re Agni himself, it ain’t normal.” She is a mess on the inside, fretting and dreading because Azula is reminding her of Okon. “What’s wrong with you, how’d you go and get so sick on me?”

 

Her thoughts wander back to the bandage she glanced. Come to think of it, she hasn’t seen that arm since…

Zirin thinks that Azula is hiding it.

 

She takes a chance and tests it, reaching for the arm in question. Azula hisses and yanks away. “Lemme see it.”

 

Azula shakes her head.

 

“Azula, lemme see it, please.”

 

She shakes her head with more force. Today is a risk day; Zirin grabs her arm and wrenches it out of a tangle of sheets, ignoring Azula’s hushed no’s as she unravels the bandage. “Oh, Agni. Oh, Agni, Azula, why ain’t you say anything?” Her voice cracks. It is a horrific sight, the princess’ arm. She has never seen anything so swollen. It reeked of infection too. The fluid that flows out of it had been abundant enough to soak through bandages Azula hasn’t bothered to change. It is a mix of vile colors, reds, browns, and yellows. Parts of the skin around the gash seem to be blistering, some of them have popped already adding to the ooze. “Why ain’t you say anything?” She asks again.

 

She doesn’t expect an answer. She doesn’t know what to do. The infection is well underway, even if garden was still lush she doesn’t think that it’ll do the princess any good. In her head she is running through all the accommodations she will have to make for when Azula loses her arm. It occurs to Zirin that, that was particularly why she kept that arm out of view. “It’s already dead, Azula.”

Zirin will drag her to the doctors at first light, kicking and screaming if she has to.

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula awakens before Zirin, though ‘awake’ is a bit of a stretch. She is groggy and somewhat delirious. The infection runs rampart within her and she feels the fever coursing through every inch of her. Every fiber. Every hair. She becomes fixated on the gash on her arm. A red streak glares at her, spanning out towards her heart. And she knows that the infection is on its way there. It is a little too befitting, she must say. It becomes too much for her to handle on her own so she shakes Zirin awake.

 

“I see that you’re eager to get on over to the doctor.” Zirin tries to joke.

But Azula shakes her head because she knows…

 

Zirin has that determined look in her eye, the one that tells Azula that she’ll be on her way to the physician.

But that’s not how it will be, Zirin won’t get her out of the house.

She knows….

 

And because she knows, Azula hugs her. She pulls Zirin close and sobs. Because she knows that she’s dying. She knows that if she doesn’t swallow her pride and fully accept the apology she has been given, that the door will close and lock, another opportunity lost for good.

 

“Hey it’s gonna be okay.” That’s how Azula knows it isn’t. When people say that it’s going to be alright, that’s when things are messiest.

 

Her good hand touches Zirin’s lips. “Sorry.”

 

Zirin’s face loses color. “Oh no, ain’t you say that right now. Ain’t you say that…”

 

Now she knows too.

 

Azula’s head beats with more fury than ever. The pulsing there is only matched by that which lies in her arm. Her arm that gushes steadily. How cruel that a small gash is what ends her. She has probably said it many times before her abduction, but she doesn’t recall having done so, so she says it. She apologizes again and tells Zirin that she loves her despite how violent things had become.

 

“Ain’t you say that to me right now!” Zirin practically screams.

She definitely knows.

 

And Azula knows.

She knows even better now. Now that her senses seem to dull. Now that the pain seems to fade. She feels almost sublime. At ease. Her mind is quiet.  She turns to the dresser and finds the wings. “I’m going to need them.”

Without another word, she holds them out.

 

Zirin’s cheeks are as wet as Azula’s are dry. She is as shaky and panicky as Azula is in bliss. Still, she takes the wings from the princess. Azula tries to smile, but doesn’t quite get there. She feels the mattress shift as Zirin moves to slide the wings in place.

She doesn’t even have the first one in when Azula goes limp.

 

The most piercing and blood curdling scream follows Azula into the dark.

 

**.oOo.**

  

Some days later, the corpse collector finds two.


	20. On The Edge (Alternate Ending)

Azula wakes up in bindings. They dig into her skin in the most uncomfortable way. Half-groggy and half-mad she yells out to be released. It is hard for her to recall what had happened, she thinks that she probably won’t remember what she has just done either. But whatever it was that had happened, it seemed worlds away. As though she has been out for ages as opposed to a day or two. Zirin says it has been only a few hours.

Zirin.

The face, the name. It makes her blood boil.

It comes back to her, what had happened and the rage and fury comes back in full. She half-shrieks at Zirin, the dirty wench, to release her. She yells and spits other things, wild things, cruel things, but if Zirin has heard, she doesn’t react.

 

Instead she clips away at the pelts Azula had worked so hard to put on. She screams again, "You can't, I need them there!" How dare the woman take it from her. It had been her decision. She wraiths against the restraints, feeling them scrape and open the fragile skin beneath. Zirin remains undeterred, sniping at the threads methodically, if not a little robotically. She ought to calm herself, she has already caused Zirin to pierce her skin multiple times. In fact, the scissors have already left a particularly large gash on her forearm.

 

"Why?" She hears Zirin ask. "Why do you need them?"

 

Azula recognizes that she is displaying the most inappropriate emotion given the situation. But she is no longer in control. With a malicious curling grin she replies, "so everyone will know…"

 

"Know what." Zirin asks. Azula is has stopped squirming, letting the question sink in. Zirin makes another cut, and the princess feels her lip twitch in irritation.

 

"What I am." Her voice drops into something of a hiss. It doesn’t befit her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she is scared for herself and of herself. But that part can’t seem to take hold firmly enough to stop the larger part of her.

 

Zirin breathes deeply and Azula knows that she has disturbed the woman through and trough. She almost feels bad, she _wants_ to feel ashamed but she doesn’t. "What? A monster?” Zirin finally askes. “Is that really what you think?” And now the woman looks hurt. She is looking at Azula with a humiliating amount of pity. "Why do you think that?"

 

"I killed her." Azula replies abruptly.

 

She sees Zirin’s grip on the scissors falter and hopes that she will drop them. But she doesn’t, she holds them tightly, making another cut and asks, "who?"

 

A grim smile spreads across Azula’s face. "Li." The name morphs into a laugh. But she thinks that her cheeks are wet. Is she crying? It registers that she is. And she doesn’t understand it because she is still laughing too. So she cries harder, until it over powers the laugh. Finally she is conveying the correct emotion.

 

"If you're a monster, then I am too." Zirin replies.

 

Azula doesn’t know what she means, not exactly. But she nods in agreement because she knows that it will hurt the woman ripping off her pelts. "We're both awful, we both need too…" She elaborates, trailing off as an idea crosses her mind. A dreadful, vile thing. Dark and grotesque but it makes sense to her. She can already visualize the finished product. "I can sew one onto you." Of course she would use different pelts, they couldn’t look the same. And instead of a hog-monkey head she would find Zirin a fox-antelope one.

 

"No." Zirin replies too quickly for Azula’s liking. "No. I'm a human bein' and you are too."

 

It tickles Azula’s temper because Zirin deserves it too. They both deserve to suffer and she needs to be the one to bring it to the both of them. Her steady stream of thinking is interrupted by a gentle kiss to her forehead. "You're not a monster." Zirin insists.

 

And the last bit of Azula is overtaken. How dare the woman? How dare she remind Azula that she is not the domineering force in this situation? How dare she put her back into such a venerable and captive state? How dare she show Azula the compassion she has no right to feel? She is an animal, a monster. Love and care isn’t for creatures like her. She screams something at Zirin but she doesn’t hear what it is. She hopes that it was something horrid about how they deserve dreary fates. Whatever it was, it was effective, Zirin looks visibly twice as tired and deflated as before. Yet she continues to dutifully pick at and untie the threads.

At least she knows her place. At least she knows that she is still a peasant and  does tasks reserved for someone of her rank.

Azula begins to feel tired. Yelling and hollering is taking its toll, but she keeps at it anyways until her body and mind can handle it no more and shut themselves down.

**.oOo.**

 

Zirin carries the princess to bed. Feeling horrible all over again, fighting with herself to think of how she could have possibly handled things better. Would it have even been possible to talk the princess down when she was treading in such deep and dark waters? Zirin doesn’t think so. She carefully tucks the princess in. She thinks to wash and dress the wounds, but fears that Azula will awaken midway through. So instead, feeling painfully guilty she straps the princess down again. She closes her eyes and draws in a shuddering sigh, wanting weep. This all felt so wrong; to bind the princess up again. She is staring to think that the princess knows restraints and captivity more than she knows freedom and comfort. Now she was helping solidify that.

 

Zirin can’t afford to guilt trip herself any further, not when her father’s death still weighs so heavily on her mind. She steals away into her bedroom, leaving it only to check on Azula every now and again. At night she is tormented by dreams.

Dreams wherein, Azula has her way and they both frolic through a woefully dead garden, as rotten as reality, wearing hog-monkey masks. They weep crimson and pus at the neckline. But strangely Zirin thinks that Azula is as happy as she is miserable. The princess wears a white dress and beckons Zirin closer. Closer. Closer still, until their hog-monkey heads touch. Azula tears her mask off reveling nothing but death and infection—her face swollen beyond recognition. Zirin’s own face itches beneath the mask. It is growing harder to see and she wonders if her face is swelling too. She cries out for her father but Azula won’t allow him to hear her. Like a flicker of lightning or a skip in the song of an oldtown band, Zirin the sun has waned and Azula is hunched over something. She turns her head, an unusually fast disoriented motion. Her face is still swollen, maybe worse than before. Something drips from her mouth. Something gory. Zirin see’s her father’s hand limp in Azula’s.

She jolts awake. A fetid odor still lingers on the fringes of her mind.

 

It is early morning, she ought to check on the princess. But the dream has left her feeling baseless and unfairly suspicious of the woman. So she doesn’t. Instead she lets another day go by.

 

The next morning, she is roused by a sharp scream and she knows that Azula has finally awoken. The nature of the scream makes her weary to check up all over again. But she shovels the fear aside, she has gotten herself into this mess and she has to make it right. When she enters the room, she finds the woman looking rather sickly. Her skin is pale and drenched in sweat and she begins to regret leaving her unchecked for the last twenty-four hours. As she approaches she can tell that Azula still isn’t quite all there. "If I let you go are you gonna attack me." Zirin asks.

She doesn’t expect the answer she received, "no." The calm in her voice should have tipped her off that the princess was deciving her. But she wants so badly to believe that she has a chance to make everything okay so she takes the bate and asks, "promise?"

 

Once again, the princess nods. She is being too kind. Too understanding. Zirin doesn’t like it. She thinks of her nightmare. It rings out like a warning. A warning she brushes off despite all of her instincts screaming not to.

All she wants is to be able to hold and love the princess like she did before. She is still so angry with her but she doesn’t want to be. She longs to forgiver in full. Perhaps that was why she unstrapped the princess from the bed.

 

**.oOo.**

 

A sudden fear creeps in, Azula starts to wonder if Zirin will come back. And what if she doesn’t? What will she do then? She is feeling worse than she had when she first awoken. Her stomach won’t stop lurching, and her pounding head won’t stop spinning. She is afraid to look at her arm because she doesn’t want to see how bad the infection is getting. She doesn’t need to look at it to know that the swelling has nearly doubled. She closes her eyes and wishes that she hadn’t attacked Zirin. Days have passed and she can still feel the impact of her knuckles meeting cheek bones and she is furious at herself for proving both herself and Li right again. She doesn’t understand.

She can’t say when or why she had begun to care about the pain she caused but she wants it to stop. She, for the millionth time since Sozin’s Comet, longs to have the old Azula back. She just wants to be who she used to be.

It was easier then.

 

She tries to get up but is sent back down by a dizzy feeling and the pain in her head doubles. If she hadn’t swung at Zirin she might be getting some care. All the same, she doesn’t want it. She wants to hate the woman that she loves so much. Such is who Azula is now; split.

Split and contradicting of her own emotions.

 

She wipes at her forehead. It is alarmingly hot to touch even for her. She doesn’t know what to do other than hope that it will pass, but she has a feeling that it won’t. That feeling comes directly form the intense stinging in her arm.

 

Before the fear can truly over take her, the door squeaks open and Zirin is setting a loaf of bread on her night stand. It looks impressively bland and unappetizing, but her belly yearns for something to ease the queasiness and the hunger pangs. She hasn’t eaten anything Zirin has given her yet, but this time she plans on giving in. She doesn’t think she can hold out any longer, powerful as her spite is.

She doesn’t want to cave in front of Zirin, but the woman eyes her for a long while. The whole time the bread tempts her. Finally, she reaches out and accepts the bread, but she makes a point of ignoring Zirin. It tastes just as plain as Azula had expected but at least it is something.

 

She decides to make a show of finishing her meal and chucks the plate in Zirin’s direction. She doesn’t watch, but she hears it shatter. When it does something in her shatters too, she doesn’t know what it is but she wishes that she could stop it. Then she hears Zirin mumble, “you ain’t a monster.” And she thinks that maybe some of the pieces went back together. Apparently, she can throw plates and punches and snarl like a beast and Zirin still saw her as a human. She fights to keep herself composed, fights to keep a stony exterior. But the truth was, she wanted to hear it again.

She is about to say so, but Zirin has vacated.

She has missed her chance.

Even if she hadn’t left, Azula didn’t know if she would have been able to apologize anyhow.

 

When Zirin doesn’t come back something in her breaks and something else rises. She can’t place the new emotion but she doesn’t like it in the slightest. She has to drown it out so she begins her screaming again. Senseless and undignified half-howl, half-yells. She hates herself again for acting so feral and indecorous. What has she become? She considers that she might be calling for help. A cry that she wants Zirin to answer for all of the wrong reasons, yet all of the right ones at the same time. Her brain is still split between the killer and the victim and she doesn’t know how to merge them back. She knows then that she was meant to die holed up in that dank dark place as some vile part-human, part-animal atrocity.

It would have been better than living as one.

She needs to escape. Someone needs to put her out of her misery. She begins to pray for her end as many others before her probably have.

There was nothing left of the real her anyhow.

 

Her head finds the pillow again and she struggles to get comfortable as tremors rock her body, tremors she can’t fight. She is cold and hot all at once. She doesn’t think that she will have to pray for much longer because the gash on her arm is looking much worse. It hurts to the darkest cesspools of the Spirit World and back and is looks like it too. But relative to what Li has put her through, she doesn’t feel a thing. She wraps a towel around it and tries to put it out of her mind. But it is hard to put it out of her mind when it festers and burns beneath her makeshift bandages. It is hard to not think about when she knows that she had let it get bad enough to need removal. So she can’t get help now, because she needs her arm. But what good is an arm if she is dead. She sobs to herself once again, and wishes more furiously that she could just die already.

 

She is left alone for days to contemplate it. It crosses her mind many times over to send a bolt of lighting through her heart, but for the first time in her life, she isn’t calm enough to generate a spark. Her stomach lurches again, this time in dread. What has she become? How has she lost herself so much as to not be able to bend? She truly is weak and worthless. The only silverlineing she can see is that she is nearing her end. She only wishes that she had the strength to stand up and bring it on sooner. She knows that Zirin has stopped by, because she has found food waiting for her, but she has always come when Azula was sleeping. She cared just enough to feed the princess but not enough to try to talk to her.

She cries silently to herself, out of pain and out of loneliness. It is silent, indeed, but not silently enough, because Zirin soon appears in the room. This time the smell is more appetizing. This time when she accepts the food, a generous bowl of vegetable soup, she doesn’t rebuke Zirin. Her hands are shaky as she brings the spoon to her lips. She clings to her anger though and makes sure that her stare—tired eyed as it is—is a piercing, angry one.

 

The soup warms her body—pleasantly in comparison to the humidity of her fever. It brings a bit of color to otherwise pale cheeks. Her entire complexion has gone pale and splotchy. The color of death and disease.

 

Zirin finally speaks "I ain't mean none of that." It takes a moment for Azula to connect the dots. But Zirin continues without making sure that she had. "I ain't mean it and that's why I went and tried fixin' 'em. So you can wear 'em again 'cause father woulda wanted that." She pauses and makes eye contact. "I want that."

 

Azula swallows. She didn’t know that, that was what she wanted to hear until Zirin had said it. Her eyes water, but this time the emotion behind them was a bit more pleasant. Suddenly she isn’t quite ready to die. Zirin has been holding the wings out to her for some time now and she reaches out to touch them, but she isn’t sure that she should take them. She still doesn’t think that she deserves a gift like that. A gift that had the potential to make her feel powerful and respectable because she felt anything but.

 

"Go on." Zirin beckoned her. "I know they ain't as good as before but they're the best I can do."

 

Her best meant a lot to Azula, more than the princess wanted to admit. She reaches out and grabs the wings, flashing her towel bandages. She quickly hides it away once again and holds the wings close. Zirin offers to put them on her but she doesn’t want to let go of them just yet. Zirin let her know that the offer still stood. She strokes her wings lovingly because she has missed them. She has missed them so terribly.

She realizes at once that she had missed Zirin just as so, if not more. She has a nasty habit of defaulting fear and sorrow to rage. She thinks that she wasn’t every angry at all, at least not at Zirin.

For the first time in such a long time she is able to smile. It is something Zirin catches and returns.

 

Zirin takes the empty soup bowl from her and tells her to get some rest. She knows that she needs it and maybe now she can finally get some. Zirin visits her on and off, making mundane conversation that Azula doesn’t respond to. But she listens attentively and Zirin catches on, opting to tell her stories instead. Until finally she inquires, "why won't you talk to me?" Azula hopes that she hasn’t offended her.

 

Azula is well aware that she hasn’t talked much since her capture and it takes her a while to figure out why. At last, she does. "People only get hurt when I talk." She pauses. "Li did."

 

"What do you mean?"

 

Azula doesn’t answer, she doesn’t want to talk about Li anymore. She doesn’t want to remember how it all went wrong despite her best intentions and efforts. Anyways, she is feeling to worn for conversations. She feels herself growing weaker each day. She thinks that her prayers were finally being answered just when she started taking them back. She wants to recover so she can use her wings, but she feels herself withering away. She is growing so small and breakable. Perhaps gaunter than she had been in captivity. Zirin is touching her forhead. "You're burnin' up and it ain't normal, I don't care if you're Agni himself, it ain't normal. What's wrong with you, how'd you go and get so sick on me?"

Zirin is as bold as ever and uncovers the answer for herself, her hand wraps around the princess’ arm. On impulse alone she jerks away.

 

“Lemme see it." Zirin insists.

 

Azula shook her head furiously and then a second time when Zirin persisted. Despite all past mishaps, Zirin still has the balls to yank the princess’ hand out from under the blankets. She doesn’t like what she sees when she finally gets the towel unwrapped. Azula hates the heartbreaking crack in her voice when she remarks, "oh, Agni. Oh, Agni, Azula, why ain't you say anything?"

 

Azula doesn’t answer, partially because she doesn’t have the answer and partially because even she is shocked by the sight. It is worse than it had been before; weeping very openly and in the most appalling array of colors. The ooze is an unhealthy sickening mix of pus and blood and all kinds of decay. Her body looks as if it is decomposing while she still breathes and she is more afraid than she has ever been. Especially seeing the line of red pointing at her heart. She wonders if it has already been contaminated too. Zirin says what she least wants to hear. "It's already dead, Azula."

 

And that is enough. She is shaking all over and breathing grows hard. She doesn’t know if it is the infection finally stealing her life away or if it is the panic. Either which way she can’t stop herself, she can’t take control. She can’t seem to control anything these days. She chides herself for not getting herself help when she first noticed the infection. She kicks herself for being too self-loathing to care. All the while she continues to hate herself for being so foolish. She is getting dizzy and can feel her vision getting sparkly and dimming. She thinks that she mumbled Zirin’s name but everything is foggy and spinning. Zirin’s voice is distorted and uncanny when she hears it.

Things go quiet in her mind.

 

 

**.oOo.**

 

It is both the hardest and easiest decision that Zirin has ever had to make. She knows that Azula will resent her for it for a very long time. But she has to act, she supposes that it will be better for the princess to live hating her than to die loving her. She has put the woman through so much already that she thinks the princess should have the chance to find someone better.

 

This time carrying Azula is frighteningly easy, she has hardly any weight to her at all. Zirin’s heart aches all over again, the princess is suffering terribly. It is probably a mercy that she finally passed out. It is most certainly a mercy when the woman is spread out on a gurney with a saw coming down. Zirin wants to stand by and watch, holding her hand should she wake up in the middle of it. But as soon as the tourniquet is fashioned around her bicep and the blade starts ripping in, Zirin rushes out. The slurping and sucking sound follows her. She almost doesn’t hear the doctor assure her that they will make sure Azula sleeps the operation through.

 

They only come outside to tell her that they are through with the operation. Zirin lingers around for a while waiting for the princess to come to. But she doesn’t that night nor the next. Zirin begins to fret that she never will, but her breathing is steady and the healer assures her that she is doing well, that she only needs to fight off the infection. The healer and the doctor take turns providing Azula drink and food—mostly soups, stews, and ice creams that pose less of a choking hazard. Occasionally, Zirin gave them a hand with this. Finally, she decides to have someone send for her if the princess wakes. She thinks that she has found a better use of her time.

 

It only occurs to her as she is walking away, that she is going to have to pay for these services. She hopes that she can persuade Azula to reveal her identity or at least get her brother to send some gold. It is a matter for another time.

Right now, she has to focus on a new project. She enters her father’s work room for the first time in ages. It awakens within her a sense of sorrow and longing. The air within is musky and neglected and she makes a vow to herself that she will fix it up alongside the garden when Azula recovers.

 

She rummages through draws and through stacks of paper left sitting on Okon’s workbench. Finally she comes across the blueprints she is looking for. She hugs them to her chest and whispers, “thank you, father.”

 

She looks them over, and decides to tinker with a model first. The design looks easy enough, no where near as complicated as the wings had been. She is determined to prove that she is truly the daughter of a mechanist. If she is as good with her hands and lucky as she hopes she is, she might be able to make a career of it _and_ help the princess.

 

She works the days through until she has a functioning model. She only steals away from the workshop when she needs to eat or relieve herself. And then once more to return to the hospital and measure the length of Azula’s bicep and forearm. The doctor informs her that so far, Azula has only woken up in spurts. It is just as well, she wants to have some progress made before the firebender awakens. Now that she has the correct scale she can begin her real project.

 

**.oOo**

 

Azula knows what she will find when she looks at her shoulder. She knows because she knows Zirin. The woman wasn’t going to let her die. She didn’t want to die either, but she also doesn’t fancy being out a limb. She keeps her eyes closed as she brushes her shoulder, feeling only the visages of what had once been her arm.

She can’t help the tears that managed to push through. She thinks that they are well-earned anyways. She has one less arm to firebend with and one more reason to feel uncomfortable in her beaten, tattered body.

 

She used to be so perfect, flawless, the standard. What was she now?

 

Zirin arrives an hour after the doctor had sent for her. She is reminded that she is going to have to do some sending of her own. She loathes the idea of contacting her brother, but she can’t see Zirin having the money to pay for her operation. She supposes that her payment to the tattoo artist is well overdue anyways.

 

“You ain’t mad, are you?” Zirin asks.

 

She isn’t, not at Zirin. Maybe not at all, she doesn’t really know how she feels other than a nagging sense of insecurity, but that is nothing new. She shakes her head. She tries to sit up and is reminded again of her situation, it is strange to try to lift herself with only one weak, breakable arm. The distress must have been very plain on her face because Zirin says, “I made you something.” She holds out the beginnings of a prosthetic. “It ain’t finished yet, but it will be.”

 

The metal looked pretty expensive. An understatement, it was gold. Gold that Zirin was in the middle of adding elegant swirls to, ones that would match her wings. She admired Zirin for the thought she had put in.

 

“My dad were savin’ this metal for a very special project. He never tol’ me what it were, ‘n I guess I’ll never know. But I don’t think he woulda wanted it to go to waste.” She points at some empty nooks in the metal. “I left some room for puttin’ in jewels if you ever…” she looks around, “if you ever make it back to the palace.”

 

“I will eventually.” Azula sighs. She holds up a piece of parchment and a quill.

 

Zirin hugs her, “I promise I’ll have it finished as soon as I can.”

 

She doesn’t doubt Zirin, the woman has always had her spunk and determination. Azula hopes that she can muster up that kind of fight. But she is still so tired. She feels Zirin rubbing her back. “They’re gonna match your wings ‘n it’s gonna be so pretty.”

 

Pretty…

 

The doctor discharges her and she says that she will have his payment as soon as her letter is returned. It is a bit of a gamble, but she can’t see Zuko withholding money she has just as much right to, he is too soft for that.

 

Her days go by without much excitement. She struggles to get used to having only one arm to work with, constantly reach out for things with a phantom limb.

 And sometimes it reduces her to tears.

But in those moments, Zirin usually halts her work and takes the princess in her arms, whispering that she won’t have to worry soon. Frequently assuring her that the metal arm will be much more badass than her old one anyways. But Azula isn’t so sure, she liked her left arm a lot more than she remembered.

 

When Zirin finally comes out with her finished product it is every bit as splendid as she insisted it would be. Its gold glinted in the most extravagant way. In its empty spaces she could picture opulent rubies, and perhaps a sapphire or two, glittering opulently. The piece that would join metal to flesh was in the shape of an open-mouthed dragon head and she had to admit that Zirin was right about it looking badass.

“I’m gonna make you a better one that ain’t so plain, when I get better.” Zirin remarks.

 

But Azula is satisfied regardless, she is lucky to have a prosthetic at all. She has only one concern; its weight isn’t something Zirin hasn’t accounted for. She is going to have to build up her strength before she can wear it.

She rolls her eyes because it was just like Zirin to focus wholly on the design rather than the functionality.

 

**.oOo.**

 

The passing years are kinder to the both of them than Zirin had expected. Mostly because Azula had put her pride to the side just long enough to earn Zuko’s compassion. He sent a ship for the both of them with an offer to let them stay long enough for Azula to recover. He was rather firm in that if Azula gave him a hassle he would kick her out as soon as she was in better shape. The princess believed none of that and was rather instant that, one arm short, she could still kick Zuko’s ass to the Earth Kingdom and back.

 

As things unfolded, they hit it off pretty well without Ozai to pit them against each other. Still Zuko was alarmed at the sight of her; so malnourished and scarred. Apparently, she hadn’t mentioned that she lost her arm either, just that she needed very lengthy and expensive procedures. She also left out her tattoo and that she’d shaved her hair again, at least the side with the dragon’s head.

She expected Azula to get awkward and flustered about it, as the princess on occasions mentioned that she wasn’t satisfied with the look of herself. Instead the princess opted to laugh at the look of befuddlement and surprise on his face.

 

These days she was looking healthier, her skin regained color and her eyes regained their fierce sparkle. She had the muscle definition to support the metal arm which she had managed to acquire the jewels for.

 

Zirin looks up from her work. Having established herself as a decent mechanist in the Capital, she hasn’t had much time to work on a new, more elegant prosthetic for the princess. Azula is rather insistent that she is fond of the one she has now, she fancies the idea of wearing metals that meant something to the man who’d helped fix her at her lowest. So Zirin doesn’t rush her latest project. This is the first time she has been able to get to it, in fact, between fulfilling commissions and tending to her new garden.

 

Across the room Azula is penning another letter to the palace. She plans on returning, but from the sound of it Zuko will be away, so instead she may meet with him at the Jasmine Dragon. It is fine by Zirin because she has never been to the Earth Kingdom.

 

Deep into her own project, she doesn’t see Azula come up behind her. She only knows that the princess is there when she feels hands on her shoulders. “I want to go for a walk.”

 

So, obliges and takes Azula for another walk. It is almost a routine thing. The princess seems less tense when she is outside. Zirin thinks to ask her why that is, but feels as though doing so would be invasive. A twinge of sorrow tickles her belly, it was something she could have asked Azula prior to her abduction. And then she remembers that they have progressed beyond that, she hates how habitual her doubt is even after all of these years. She watches Azula run her flesh hand over a branch full of leaves as she passes it. Zirin scrunches her brows, but then, she hasn’t tried to ask the princess anything too personal lately. Azula even after so long, still no longer takes well to being approached from behind—Zirin doesn’t think she ever reacted well to that, but it is worse these days—so she waits for her to turn around before tapping her on the shoulder. Azula cocks he head and she knows that she has her attention. “Why do you like being outside so much? You never used to.”

 

Azula considers the question. “I’ve been inside for too long.”

 

“Inside the cellar, you mean?”

 

Azula nods. Zirin waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. So Zirin speaks, “you still feel that way?”

 

Azula shrugs, “it felt like a lifetime down there, I’d like to feel a lifetime go by out here too.”

 

The birds call loudly in the distance. She thinks that they sooth Azula. “That makes sense.” Zirin agrees. She takes the princess’ artificial hand, she likes the feeling of it and she thinks that it makes Azula feel that much more at ease with herself. The sun is beginning to dip and she wonders how far Azula wants to walk.

Azula doesn’t stop until she reaches the hillside.

The wind is perfect, it is calm but it packs a punch. It is hot, just about as close as it could get to being uncomfortably so, without truly being there. It pushes against Azula’s wings, it is the first time she has worn them in a long while. She says that she doesn’t want to wear them out or break them. Zirin assures her that she has spent more time with them, making them sturdier and that she wouldn’t have to worry about that. But Azula still doesn’t want to risk it. Zirin can’t tell how the princess feels, but she looks rather majestic with those wings unfurled and her clothes fluttering in the golden haze of the evening. The sun glistens off of her prosthetic arm. Frankly, Zirin has never beheld a presence like Azula’s. It is uniquely powerful and she hopes that the princess feels that way.

 

The ledge she stands upon isn’t too high up, nothing that would leave more than a small bruise or two if things went wrong. At worse she can probably earn herself scrapped knees and elbows as well. Zirin runs her fingers over the wings and then over Azula’s cheeks. The princess says nothing. “Good luck.” She squeezes Azula’s shoulders.  

 

**.oOo.**

 

Azula wonders how it was that she never got the chance to use her wings until now. Her face is turned up towards the sun and it washes over her pleasantly, gracing her cheeks with an inviting warmth.  Even after all of this time, she savors the feeling, lest it be lost to her.

 

“I don’t need it,” she says at last, “I have talent instead.”

 

Zirin laughs as the princess makes the jump. And they work, just as Aang’s glider worked. It probably helped that Zirin had taken note of its craftmanship the last time she’d seen it, and made some tweaks to the wings.

 

She pivots and faces Zirin, feeling the breeze take hold of the hair she still had. The woman is beaming from ear to ear and whooping excitedly. She can’t exactly hear what the woman is saying, but it has something to do with Okon being proud and her being a mechanical genius. And then maybe another something about how Azula is a literal dragon or something equally as ridiculous.

 

Her wings she pulls the strings attached to each wing again and again, they flap, guiding her back towards Zirin. But she doesn’t think that she is ready to come down yet. Because it no longer weighs her down anymore, what Li has done and what she had done in turn. It no longer weighs her down that she had lost her mind, then her dignity, and then her arm. She is free.  

Truly free.  


End file.
